Emma Suárez makes talking about the past look almost too much to bear. Her stillness in Julieta is deeply moving, even when the film’s reluctance to explain its people becomes frustrating.
Fi1m perspective
In Julieta (2016), Emma Suárez makes a woman’s difficulty in speaking about the past the centre of her performance. Her Julieta Arcos cannot easily judge her own share of responsibility, and Suárez does not settle the question for her. We were moved by her stillness because even talking seems to demand strength the character can barely find. The uncertainty matters: we can feel for Julieta without being sure that she understands herself.
Her reputation was established through leading roles in Julio Medem’s Cows (1992), The Red Squirrel (1993) and Earth (1996), with Carmelo Gómez a recurring on-screen partner. Pilar Miró’s verse adaptation The Dog in the Manger (1996), with Suárez as Diana, offers another starting point. She balanced cinema with substantial theatre work in the 2000s. By the time Julieta and her supporting role in The Next Skin (2016) brought renewed prominence, she had long experience of carrying films.
Pedro Almodóvar’s useful decision in Julieta is to let Suárez and Adriana Ugarte, playing the younger Julieta, remain different. The casting makes the years felt without asking either actress to explain how one woman became the other. Ugarte’s performance has a life beyond showing us what went wrong, while Suárez resists treating age as a guarantee of self-knowledge. Neither gives us a simple explanation of the character’s troubles, which can be uncomfortable when we want to know how much blame she should bear.
That does not make Julieta an unqualified success, nor does Suárez’s performance need us to pretend it is. The film’s reluctance to explain its people sometimes frustrates, and her care cannot make every unanswered question rewarding. She does, however, give us enough reason to stay with this woman through the difficulty of looking back. Start with Julieta, but do not expect her to answer every question the writing leaves open.
Biography
Emma Suárez is a Spanish actress. Born in Madrid on 25 June 1964, she made her screen debut as a teenager and went on to work in theatre, film and television while studying dramatic art.
She gained prominence in the 1990s through collaborations with directors including Julio Medem on Cows (1992) and The Red Squirrel (1993), and Pilar Miró on The Dog in the Manger (1996). Suárez played the title role in Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta (2016). She has received three Goya Awards for her performances.
