The Destructive Absence of History in Almodóvar's Julieta

It's high time we stopped talking about Almodóvar making the same cinema over and over. Even his previous film, Los amantes pasajeros is rather an attempt to step in the same river twice or to play with old toys. At press-conference in Cannes Almodóvar confessed to watching Bergman's films in the course of preparation for the shooting of Juileta. Judging by his interviews Bergman is hardly Spanish director's all-time favorite but curiously enough the powerful Bergmanian prelude of red color might be the only duly reappropriated borrowing in all of the movie. The relentless assault on directors of the past seems to be over, inventive kitschy opening titles are out of favor. Almodóvar could resisit using some flamboyant wallpaper, a lovely teapot and similar familiar trifles but they are a unobliging part of interior design on par with non-Almodóvary dark painting by Lucian Freud which sometimes comes into view without really adding any dimensions. You'll find some Hitchcock here if you want to but it's routine and decoration more than anything else as well.

Ornamentality of parts that used to embody Almodóvar's style is an evidence of movida withdrawing into the past. The nostalgic Spaniard doesn't have much to do apart from filling the film with sings of his past youth. Going back to Juileta's coming into life, it was rather strange: Almodovar is reported to have been studying Antonio Lopez Garcia's paintings, Jeanne Moreau's gate and reading books. All of this to supposedly get absorbed into grief. The superficiality of educated man's leasure-time diversion shows even though it's true that you can never completely trust a director. The events in the film also move on a slower-than-usual pace, Alberto Igesias's music is more even, and the only song (marvellous but unappropriately passionate Si no te vas by Chavela Vargaz) is forced out to play to the end titles but even there seems out of place. The most prominent ambassador of Spanish movida developed an interest in drama, but if you look closely the frenetic trembling of the present moment in his early movies might seem more profound than the somberness of today. While it's true that Madrid cultural scene of the 1980s never neglected fashion and design, fear, AIDS, drugs and so-called Pact of Forgetting (it's interesting that at first Julieta was supposed to be called Silence) was a reverse side of seemingly thoughtless joie de vivre.

Judging by the result, Almodóvar decided that impulsive behavior and the tumult of colors that made him famous are not suitable for a dramatic story and opted for restraint. This is what makes the new film different from previous ones since in effect this isn't the first time he turned to history (flashbacks, diaries, investigations are vital to the narratives of All About My Mother (1999) and later in Talk to Her (2002), Bad Education (2004) etc.). And just like before it's a private story, although Julieta is particularly detached from the society (she teaches classical literature for a while and then lives in the countyside or in Madrid without much going out). Regardless of formal devices (a diary-letter, flashbacks, plain talking and a lucky scene on a train which is sort of transporting both Julieta and the viewer into the past) the former camp quality of Almodóvar's films becomes detached from its conext (the past, in effect) and becomes merely ornamental. The painful memories of generation are substituted with private story based on the commonplace juxtaposition of Eros and Thanatos. It's so generic that the fact that Julieta was to become Almodóvar's first English-language film seems only natural.

Only two scenes with slow-motion are tryly “camp” here, sublime and out of place. The deer who is slowly running almost towards the train's window is meant to serve as foreplay to a sex scene. The moment is so beautiful as personification of nature's force of desire that later attempt to counter-point sex with guilt seems almost stupid. It's tempting to read the plot where grief and silent guilt destroy the relationship between Julieta and her daughter as a metaphor for the Pact of Forgetting. However, the incongruence of style (not the old one already but not new yet), lack of attachment to the world of movida or the present tell that what we see is rather one more universal story. It seems that in Almodóvar's idea serious drama only happens “nowhere” and “nowhen”.

There's hardly a reason to talk about Almodóvar as an old man mumbling, though. He hasn't become a reactionary. Even though there's no trace of former abundance of vice, the only scene with allusions to homosexual relationship is telling. The conversation that we see and hear implies that secular education and sexual freedom can lead to religious fanaticism if they are imbued with repressed feeling of guilt. This is clearly the case when the director is clearly aware of his own nostalgic tendencies and the key to the film can be found in protagonist's speech. When Julieta speaks about destructive absence, it's not only about her relationship with daughter but also about the film where telling the story of two women means oblivion for an epoch and its people. They are absent and thus destroy the film. Julieta becomes a “zombie” (two of the music themes are named Walking like a zombie and director himself several times referred to his protagonist as such in the interviews). She decided not to speak about her psychic trauma and contaminated everuthing around with guilt. The film itself fails for similar reasons. Nostalgia, the feeling of guilt and desire to try something new, love for gaudy cakes and seeming (?) necessity to throw them into the bucket pull Julieta in different directions. So we have a deceptively simple but very contradictory film. But then maybe Almodóvar is just happy to be transported into his world of women with every sound of clapper and doesn't care much about the passing Angel of History.

Original is here. The text was translated for the Warsaw FIPRESCI project. Unfortunately, just when I recieved a formal invitation I had to decline it. So here it is.

Тэкст быў перакладзены для ўдзелу ў Warsaw FIPRESCI project. Ад паездкі, на жаль, давялося адмовіцца, але пераклады я вырашыў размясціць тут.