After years of silence, Julieta has learned to live without her daughter Antía. While preparing to leave Madrid to move to Portugal with her companion, who knows nothing of her past life, she runs into a childhood friend of Antía’s, who tells Julieta she saw Antía a week before. Over whelmed by emotions and regret, Julieta decides to stay in Madrid and return to the building where she lived with her daughter. She starts writing Antía a long letter, describing her life before her birth and the events that led to their separation...

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In recent years, Almodóvar’s movies have ranged from hauntingly tight (the thriller The Skin I Live In with Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya) and sloppily lazy (the awful and forgettable I’m So Excited!). Back in the official competition at Cannes, Almodóvar’s Julieta is somewhere between the two: a melodrama in his typically female groove, but with a much more sober style than usual. This approach, in which style disappears behind bitter and complex feelings as he aims for maturity, is a failure: Julieta floats along with neither passion nor dimension, caught within a superficial plot. The striking Adriana Ugarte brings a semblance of life to the film, but in the audience it mainly generates polite boredom laced with amazement – that the usually passionate filmmaker could make a movie so dull.