Mongrel Media + Mr. Will want to give Readers in Canada a chance to win Run-of-Engagement Passes across Canada to see TIFF ’16 selection JULIETA, the latest from visionary Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar.
Synopsis:
Just as Julieta (Emma Suarez) and her partner, Lorenzo (Dario Grandinetti) are planning to leave Madrid for Portugal, she has a chance encounter with Bea (Michelle Jenner), her daughter’s best friend. The unexpected meeting is a shock to Julieta, who hasn’t seen her daughter Antia since she was 18 and leaving for a religious mountain retreat.
When Antia was never heard of again, Julieta reported her daughter missing and even hired private detectives to find her. However, Bea tells her she recently saw Antia vacationing with her children at Lake Cuomo. She reveals that Antia knows her mother is in Madrid, so Julieta decides to stay put, hoping her daughter will contact her.
Trailer:
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Mongrel Media release JULIETA Friday, December 23, 2016.
(Photo/video credit: Mongrel Media)
Review by George Kozera for Mr. Will Wong
Wunderkind auteur, Spanish Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodovar returns to TIFF ’16 with JULIETA, a melodramatic female-centric Film that focuses on guilt and grief. Adapted from short stories written by Nobel prize winner, Alice Munro, the Movie opens in Madrid with Julieta (Emma Suarez) about to move to Portugal with her lover until a chance meeting with her estranged daughter’s best friend. Abandoning her plans, she stays behind in Madrid and starts to write a Memoir trying to figure out why her daughter no longer wants anything to do with her, which Almodovar presents via a series of flashbacks with Adriana Ugarte playing the younger Julieta.
Much like legendary Hollywood Director George Cukor, Almodovar excels in bringing-out outstanding performances by actresses and JULIETA is no exception. The two ladies playing the title character, as well as Rossy de Palma in a supporting role as a housekeeper that channels the character Mrs. Danvers in the Hitchcock classic Rebecca, are compelling and keeps the interest in this Movie throughout. What the Movie lacks is focus and subtlety. The story and musical score is so melodramatic and off-putting that it borders on a parody, cliché-ridden Ross Hunter production. I miss the Almodovar Movies of the past – they were audacious, salacious and bodacious.
JULIETA screens at TIFF:
Sunday, September 11, 2016 at 6:00 PM VISA SCREENING ROOM
Tuesday, September 13, 2016 at 12:15 PM TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX 2
Umm… can we go to Cannes? The lineup for the prestigious Film Festival has been revealed and this year 49 titles from 28 countries will be making their way to the Croisette May 11-12, 2016. The Festival is seen as a precursor to some of the Films that will be seen Awards Season as contenders and also in our City, TIFF this September?
Among the highlights are Woody Allen‘s latest, Café Society, which re-teams once again Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg. The Film is about a young man in the ’30s who goes to Paris looking to work in Film, but he falls in love and is swept away by the café society. It opens the Festival.
Unlike other years, no Closing Night Film was announced. Like TIFF, they will re-screen the winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or.
American Honey from Andrea Arnold (Transparent), is a British Film about a group of young people who travel the U.S. selling magazine subscriptions and the antics they get into. Shia Labeouf and Riley Keough star.
Elle is the latest from Paul Verhoeven (Showgirls, Basic Instinct) and it centers around a video game company executive who gets attacked in her own home. She devotes her energies into finding her assailant and what results is much like an unpredictable video game.
Canada is well-represented by festival darling Xavier Dolan‘s latest, It’s Only the End of the World. It centers on a man who returns home to tell his family he’s dying. It stars Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard and Léa Seydoux.
Visionary Pedro Almodóvar returns to the festival circuit with his latest Julieta, which follows the life of a woman on the verge of madness and her life 30 years prior when things were grand.
Loving from Jeff Nichols follows an interracial couple who go to prison for being in love in 1958. Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton star.
Jim Jarsmusch returns with his latest, Paterson, about a bus driver who dabbles in poetry. Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Adam Driver stars.
Sean Penn directs The Last Face, starring Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem, both aid workers who fall in love in a war-torn Liberia.
Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) returns with The Handmaiden, about an heiress who falls for a thief.
Nicolas Winding Refn is developing a reputation for stylish, unconventional and polarizing Films and he returns with The Neon Demon, starring Elle Fanning as a supermodel whom is preyed upon by her rivals.
Personal Shopper stars Kristen Stewart as a young woman working as a shopper for a celebrity. Olivier Assayas directs.
Screening out of competition, meaning they are not competing for the Palme d’Or, are Jodie Foster‘s New York-filmed Money Monster starring Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Jack O’Connell. Steven Spielberg‘s eagerly-awaited Roald Dahl adaptation, The BFG also premieres. The Nice Guys by Shane Black, stars Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe – a pair of almost-cops who bend the rules surrounding a missing girl’s investigation.
(Photo credit: Warner Bros.)
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