Julieta
26/03/17 Filed in: Amazon Prime
Looking for a film to watch on Amazon Prime yesterday evening we decided on the well-reviewed Julieta. Not a French film this time, but Spanish, and a slight hiccup at the beginning when I had to work out how to display the missing subtitles.
The film starts with Julieta (Emma Suárez) packing to leave for Portugal, bubble-wrapping a small statuette the significance of which is revealed much later in the story. It is to be a new life with Lorenzo. But a chance meeting with a childhood friend of her estranged daughter stops her in her tracks. Beatriz (Bea), the friend, tells Julieta that she had met her daughter, Antía, in Switzerland, where she was living with three children. Julieta subsequently informs Lorenzo that she won't be going to Portugal, leaving him totally baffled.
We are then taken back to Juileta's youth, with Adriana Ugarte now playing the younger woman. She is on a train and declines an invitation to chat with a man who sits opposite, instead going to the lounge car. This results in two major emotional episodes, the first being that she meets Xoan, a fisherman, who will become her partner, and the second that the man she moved away from commits suicide, something for which she feels in some way responsible.
Xoan is married, but his wife is seriously ill, so despite making love when they met on the train, their relationship doesn't mature until Julieta receives a letter from him. She visits his house where she receives a cold reception from the housekeeper, but also finds out that Xoan's wife has died. This opens the way for them to be together and they have a child, Antía. But there is a sculptor, Ava, with whom Xoan is very friendly, and who makes the statuettes mentioned previously.
With Antía now older she goes off to a summer camp, which is where she meets Bea, and the two become inseparable. While Antía is away Julieta has an argument with Xoan after he admits occasional sexual encounters with Ava. Upset, Xoan decides to take his fishing boat out despite a storm warning. The result is tragedy, and it is left to Julieta to tell Antía what has happened. In her grief Antía wants to be near Bea, and Julieta rents a flat in Madrid to make this possible.
When Antía is 18 she goes to a spiritual retreat in the Pyrenees, telling Julieta that she won't be in contact for three months. This upsets Julieta but she reluctantly accepts the situation. However, when Julieta arrives at the retreat at the end of the three months, she finds that Antía isn't there, and is told that her daughter no longer wishes to communicate with her. Thereafter, she receives only a blank card on her daughter's 19th, 20th and 21st birthdays. The cakes she has bought end up in the bin.
Things become clearer when Julieta visits Ava, who is dying with muscular sclerosis. She discovers that Antía knew about the row with Xoan, blaming both Julieta and Ava for her father's death.
Julieta meets Lorenzo at Ava's funeral, and they begin a relationship that takes Julieta's mind off Antía. But Lorenzo knows nothing about Antía, although suspects that there is something in Julieta's past that she isn't sharing.
Returning to where the film began, after Julieta tells Lorenzo that she will not be going to Portugal, she rents a flat in the same block where she and Antía stayed all those years ago, hoping her daughter may return, Bea having said that Antía believed her mother still to be living there. But when Julieta meets Bea again, she learns that Antía is also estranged to her, despite them being the closest of friends while children.
However, the move back to the apartment block does in the end provide Julieta with what she had been hoping for, when a letter arrives from Antía with a return address on the back. What caused her daughter to change her mind after all these years?
A very emotional film that may provoke a few tears. Also an object lesson in how misplaced guilt can poison people's lives.
With Antía now older she goes off to a summer camp, which is where she meets Bea, and the two become inseparable. While Antía is away Julieta has an argument with Xoan after he admits occasional sexual encounters with Ava. Upset, Xoan decides to take his fishing boat out despite a storm warning. The result is tragedy, and it is left to Julieta to tell Antía what has happened. In her grief Antía wants to be near Bea, and Julieta rents a flat in Madrid to make this possible.
When Antía is 18 she goes to a spiritual retreat in the Pyrenees, telling Julieta that she won't be in contact for three months. This upsets Julieta but she reluctantly accepts the situation. However, when Julieta arrives at the retreat at the end of the three months, she finds that Antía isn't there, and is told that her daughter no longer wishes to communicate with her. Thereafter, she receives only a blank card on her daughter's 19th, 20th and 21st birthdays. The cakes she has bought end up in the bin.
Things become clearer when Julieta visits Ava, who is dying with muscular sclerosis. She discovers that Antía knew about the row with Xoan, blaming both Julieta and Ava for her father's death.
Julieta meets Lorenzo at Ava's funeral, and they begin a relationship that takes Julieta's mind off Antía. But Lorenzo knows nothing about Antía, although suspects that there is something in Julieta's past that she isn't sharing.
Returning to where the film began, after Julieta tells Lorenzo that she will not be going to Portugal, she rents a flat in the same block where she and Antía stayed all those years ago, hoping her daughter may return, Bea having said that Antía believed her mother still to be living there. But when Julieta meets Bea again, she learns that Antía is also estranged to her, despite them being the closest of friends while children.
However, the move back to the apartment block does in the end provide Julieta with what she had been hoping for, when a letter arrives from Antía with a return address on the back. What caused her daughter to change her mind after all these years?
A very emotional film that may provoke a few tears. Also an object lesson in how misplaced guilt can poison people's lives.