Pedro Almodóvar’s last two films were affronts to his reputation as a director. The Skin I Live In (2011) was a grotesque horror show starring Antonio Banderas as a mad plastic surgeon. I’m So Excited was a wacky romp in an airplane that badly needed fuel. His latest, Julieta, currently in competition at Cannes, was a box office disappointment in Spain, where it opened last month – possibly due to the director being named in the Panama Papers – but it’s better than a lot of what he’s done lately, as well as the closest thing to a mainstream movie that one can imagine from the Spanish eccentric. There are no drag queens, paedophile priests, gruesome murders or operatic nervous breakdowns in Julieta (pronounced ‘hoo-lee-ta’), inspired by stories from Alice Munro’s acclaimed collection Runaway. But there’s no mistaking the film as the work of anyone else.
The middle-aged Julieta Joven (Adriana Ugarte) is packing to leave present-day Madrid for Portugal when a chance encounter brings news of the daughter she last saw 12 years ago.
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