Julieta

Pedro Almodovar directs and adapts an Alice Munro story with Julieta, a drama about a mother desperate to reunite with her estranged adult daughter. Emma Suárez plays the title character in present day, while Adriana Ugarte portrays her in an extended flashback that forms the bulk of the film. While Julieta waits to be contacted by her daughter, she writes her story in a journal, covering her life from her first chance meeting with the girl’s father through a series of ill-fated events that eventually led the daughter into self-imposed exile. Julieta is certain to please fans of the Spanish auteur’s more straight-faced soap operas like Volver and The Flower of My Secret, but there’s next to none of that classic Almodovar-ian transgressive kink, and for a film heavy on manufactured dramatic incidents, the story is sorely lacking in forward momentum. Fortunately, the uniformly strong performances make it work. D.B.