Movie – Julieta

What I didn’t understand when this Spanish film started is why the need to show the mum that lost contact with her daughter, Antia, for 12 years in the present time. But this does become evident towards the end.The flashbacks starts when 50-something Julieta is packing up her apartment to leave Madrid and move to Portugal with her partner. As she is out doing some last bits of shopping, she bumps into an old friend of her daughters’ who says she’s seen Antia recently.This changes everything. If there is sight of her child, Julieta is staying in Madrid. She decides to move back to a building she lived in years ago in case Antia contacts her. We learn the back story though the distraught mum writing it down in the form of a letter to her daughter.I have to confess, when she starts writing about how she met Antia’s father on a train, I thought it was going to go one of two ways, and surprisingly it didn’t. It was hard to get past the jet black eyebrows on bleach blond hair (Channelling Madonna c Who's That Girl) of  the late 80s too, but I did.This is an incredibly insightful and stylish film that is full of secrets. With lashings of emotion, it takes you along with the characters and there is no way to escape the heavy intrigue. You just have to see it through, no matter how exhausting.8/10