A shipping magnate throws a party

   Willem Dafoe plays a Greek shipping magnate in The Birthday Party, another barbed critique of life among the obscenely rich.

   Basing his movie on a 2007 novel by Panos Karnezis, writer/director Miguel Angel Jimenez creates a fictionalized view of a character who resembles Aristotle Onassis. 

   Aways adventurous, Dafoe plays Marcos Timoleon, a calculating boss who’s accustomed to controlling everything but who has difficulty corralling his strong-willed daughter, Sofia (Vic Carmen Sonne). 

   Sofia’s latest challenge to her father centers on her plan to marry Ian Forster (Joe Cole), a writer who's working on a biography of Marcos.  

   To further complicate matters, Sofia is pregnant with a child Marcos insists she'll never have. The movie eventually shows the twisted lengths to which Marcos will go to ensure that he prevails.

     The story begins with a more conventional attempt at persuasion. Marcos arranges an elaborate 25th for Sofia that’s designed to coax her back into the family fold.

   Hangers-on and those wishing to curry favor with Marcos have gathered for the event. To him, they’re like extras in a show meant to protect his legacy.

    The cast includes Emma Suarez as Olivia, the wife Marcos is divorcing. Estrangement aside, he wants her help with wild-child Sofia. Sofia’s fate became even more important to Marcos after his beloved son died in a seaplane crash.

    A steady Christos Stergioglou plays Patrikios, a doctor who’s also Marcos's closest friend and confidant. The movie could have used more of him.

   We’ve already seen too much wealth porn to be overwhelmed by the luxe surroundings of Marcos’ private island, and the drama that unfolds proves more dispiriting than illuminating, a dip into a toxic pool full of characters, none especially admirable.

An isolated woman deals with loss

Director Pedro Almodovar blends stories by author Alice Munro and makes them his own.

Pedro Almodvar, the fine and often cheeky Spanish director of movies such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Skin I Live In and Talk to Her, always has been as much interior designer as movie director. In an Almodovar movie, everything from hair styles to wall paper take on evocative meaning.

Of course, all filmmakers pay attention to such details, but with Almodovar the icing and the cake often carry equal weight.

Beyond that, Almodovar's fluid camera creates a cinematic richness that's difficult to resist -- even when the director isn't working at peak form, as probably is the case in Almodovar's latest, Julieta.

Loosely basing his movie on several stories by Canadian author Alice Munro, Almodovar focuses on the title character at two distinct stages of her life: as a young teacher (Adriana Ugarte) and as a middle-aged woman (Emma Suarez).

We meet the older version of Julieta as she's about to leave Spain for Portugal with a grateful and admiring lover (Dario Grandinetti). But Suarez's Julieta backs out at the last minute, deciding to remain in Madrid. She leaves her upscale apartment, and moves into an building she occupied when her now-grown daughter was a teen-ager.

The story then introduces us to the younger Julieta, a woman whose life changes when she meets a young fisherman named Xoan (Daniel Grao) on a train. Julieta and Xoan have an affair; she becomes pregnant. Julieta moves to a small seaside town to be with Xoan.

Xoan's housekeeper (Rossy de Palma) doesn't take to Julieta, but she's totally attached to Xoan and, then, to Julieta's child, Antia. We also meet Ava (Inma Cuesta), a sculptress who was one of Xoan's lovers -- and, on occasion, still may be.

Julieta's daughter becomes the source of the middle-aged Julieta's torment as Almodovar creates a massive generational gulf. Neither mother nor daughter can deal with tragedy, and both are mired in recrimination.

Young Antia vanishes, after participating in a mountain retreat. She hasn't been in touch with her mother in more than a decade. When Julieta settles into her depressing new digs, she begins to write letters to the daughter with whom she's lost touch. These letters serve to explain why Julieta now lives in isolation.

As much as any director, Almodovar loves the movie image, and that love often redeems his movies. In the case of Julieta, the director has found material that takes him to a familiar place: the trials of a woman who responds to a chance meeting that turns into ... well ... a life.