Pedro Almodova

Julietta, a film by Almodovar, at Lincoln Cinema Plaza

 

© Gtresonline, www.revistavanityfair.es

This film’s a joke, right? It’s The Iliad done as an Iberian melodrama like those on TV at 3 am in  Mexico City. A mother gives her daughter freedom, so she ignores her. She forgets to tell her that her father has died while she was at summer camp. The daughter moves to a huge apartment in Madrid (aged 11). Then she goes into a three month mountain retreat (aged 15). After twenty years the mother notices the daughter is missing and throws a fit. “She was lost to anti-depressants for 20 years,” murmurs a woman in a crowd. “I drank too much for a decade,” writes the mother in her diary. Rossy de Palma appears (as the Charybdis). The mother drives backwards into an unknown past which probably explains everything. Credits roll. Almodovar slaps me across the face with a wet dish rag. But he didn’t. It’s a joke. Isn’t it? 

Watch the trailer: