Pedro Almodóvar directs Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte and Rossy De Palma in this tale of a woman retracing her life to understand why her daughter disappeared from it.

Whisper it but I’m not that big a fan of Almodóvar. For every decent Live Flesh or The Skin I Live In, there are a dozen of his films I find gratingly camp, screechingly histrionic and suffocatingly arch. Yes, even the Oscar nominated ones. But like the two just mentioned, Julieta is based on literary source material and something about that seems to anchor down Pedro’s worst excesses and force him to make a fine film. This one trades bludgeoning melodrama for quiet despair, catty farce for subtle but constant homages to Hitchcock. The opening segment is a mother and daughter twist on Vertigo, then we get a kinky Strangers on a Train / The Lady Vanishes interlude, while the excellent Rossy De Palma turns in a Galician variation on Mrs Danvers. Intertextual playfulness aside this more restrained approach allows the auteur to do, what even I concede, he does best; strong and multilayered female roles, gorgeous sex scenes and unmistakable eye catching colour schemes. Sonia Grande’s brilliant costume design in particular stands out. Accessible and pleasing.

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