"Total, la vida está hecha de la misma tela con la que se hacen los sueños". Translation
— Loco, the film's last spoken line.
Juliana is a 1989 Peruvian film that criticizes the country's rampant issues of sexism and how they are aggravated when mixed with racism and poverty. It was produced by Grupo Chaski and directed by Fernando Espinoza and Alejandro Legaspi. It stars Rosa Isabel Morfino as the titular protagonist.
The film tells the story of Juliana, a dark-skinned, impoverished, 13-year-old girl who suffers psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her stepfather Pacho. The scumbag also hits and demeans Juliana's mother, spending his days lazing around, treating the mother and daughter as his servants, and mooching off the mother's hard-earned money. All the while, doting on his biological son. One day, the little girl gets fed up with the situation and in a bid for liberty and to try to help her mother provide for the family, she disguises herself as a boy called Julián. This allows her to work under Don Pedro as an ambulant singer who hops from public bus to public bus to do a small performance and then beg the passengers for money. She starts earning more money than when she sold flowers at the cemetery. Unfortunately, Don Pedro is abusive to the kids who fail to meet their quota.
It's widely regarded as one of the best Peruvian films ever made, having won several prestigious awards such as the Havana Film Festival in 1988, where it was premiered and screened for critics, as well as various others in 1989 —the 39th Berlin International Film Festival, the Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de Huelva, and the Festroia International, Biarritz, and Torino film festivals. It was remastered in 2019 apropos its 30th anniversary.
As of The New '20s, this film is thirty years old. Beware of unmarked spoilers.
This film contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Juliana is as tough as the streets she grew up in. When a boy her age steals the flowers she's going to sell, she's hot on his heels until she tackles him, causing him to fall hard on the ground. Juliana then insults and shoves him, warning him not to pull the same stunt with her. During the time she's pretending to be a boy, she's no slouch when it comes to shoving the boys if they even think of getting physical with her. Later, when Cobra snitches on Don Pedro that she's actually a girl and the man menacingly gets closer to her, she's quick to grab a wooden stick and threaten him. She edges him on while waving the stick.
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Some weeks after Juliana runs away from home, she gathers enough courage to pay a visit to her mother's usual vending spot. Previously, there was friction in their relationship because Juliana's stepfather is an abusive, lazy jerk whom Juliana's mother never confronts. When they meet after being separated, it's implied that Juliana's mother is now standing up to her husband, even managing to retrieve the radio he stole from Juliana. Zigzagged because they have a happy reunion but Juliana doesn't come back to her house.
- Door Focus: Subverted in the scene where Juliana's Wicked Stepfather leaves off to unsuccessfully seek employment. After he demands from Juliana that she iron his shirt and polish and tie his shoes, he looks at himself in the mirror and then goes through the door. The camera focuses on his legs exiting and lingers on the closed door before shifting to Juliana's relieved smile. In the next scene, the trope is somewhat zigzagged because Pacho does come back through (a different) door to further torment Juliana (what the previous scene wanted us to be nervous about).
- Five-Man Band Concert: Arañita and Pelé have gotten the shit beat out of them by Don Pedro because they've failed to pay up their quota twice. Everyone hears them sob without doing anything until Juliana starts singing a cheerful tune from the radio. She slowly gets the other kids to play their instruments, even Arañita and Pelé, together so they can share a moment of joy and cheer the two beaten kids up. Notably, Arañita and Pelé do the percussion and Clavito plays his zampoña.
- Mature Work, Child Protagonists: The film deals with deep-rooted societal problems such as child labor, sexism, and to a lesser extent racism. It also portrays several instances of emotional and physical abuse inflicted on children by the adults who ought to be looking after them. All of these topics are explored from the point of view of Juliana, a 13-year-old girl, and the kids she interacts with and eventually befriends —most of them are younger than her by up to five years or so.
- Must Have Lots of Free Time: It's heavily implied that Don Pedro (the kids' adult boss) is unemployed and spends most of his time engaging in illegal activities that he funds thanks to the kids' labor. When he's not doing that, he's either checking on the kids —waking them up, splitting them into work groups, and collecting his fee of their earnings— or taking them to the beach on those rare occasions when he's in a good mood. So, it's Played for Drama.
- One-Word Title: It's just titled Juliana.
- Parents as People: Juliana's mother is genuinely loving even if she's as sexist as everyone else —making her help with the chores while leaving Juliana's younger brother alone— and is tied by societal expectations to the point that she'd be shunned by their community if she were to divorce her abusive husband. Juliana's mother is worried sick and mad when she runs away but is relieved and happy to see her daughter doing better for herself. She recognizes her instantly even when she's pretending to be a boy.
- Pose of Silence: When Cobra discovers Juliana's secret, he rushes to tell Gusano and Moni. He leans forward and just those two hear him despite all of the kids being in the same room. When the kid next to Moni asks what they are talking about, Moni does the same as Cobra, so nobody else would hear. It's eventually all unnecessary because Cobra gets fed up and yells it to everyone.
- Protagonist Title: The film is named after its main character, a 13-year-old girl named Juliana.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- The opening shot is that of Juliana's neighborhood. Particularly, it shows an unpaved street framed by one-store, half-built houses. It's meant to give the feeling that the poor have very few roads available for them in life —they are trapped in demeaning, irregular, bad-paying jobs as well as in their gender roles.
- There are several shots at the beginning that show Juliana and her friends eventually getting absorbed by the crowd. It mirrors how later in the film it's discussed how easy is for poor kids, especially those who are dark-skinned, to slip through the cracks. People only care for them for a short while, when they are pitying them.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Juliana asks her friend Clavito whether his boss, Don Pedro, would let her work for him. Clavito refuses and tells her that only men can work as ambulant singers. This is done to showcase the hard-lined sexism of Peruvian society in The '80s. Women could work only if they were poor and the job had to do something with food, cleaning, or caregiving.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: When Juliana's stepfather ramps up with his abuse, she decides to run away from home and pretend to be a boy named Julián so Don Pedro, the adult leader of a gang of working kids, would accept her. While her hair was already fairly short, she trims it so it becomes shoulder-length and stylizes it to look like a boy's hairdo. She also puts on a shirt and pants —at the time, women only wore skirts or dresses. It helps that, because of her young age, she's androgynous enough. It makes her unwilling to swim at the sea when she and the other kids go to the beach.
- Synchronized Morning Routine: There are a couple of scenes that start or end with the kids waking up in the morning and getting dressed. Instead of splitting the screen, the camera merely moves from one character to the next as all of their morning routine are fairly identical —getting up, putting on any extra clothes (such as Juliana's shirt), and ordering the sheets that cover their mattresses. A few of them, like Cobra, fix their hairdo. And then they all wash their faces and arms. It's inverted on the other two occasions when the sequence is of them preparing to go to bed. Some of the kids play an instrument or read before tucking themselves in.
- Trailers Always Spoil: One of the last scenes of the trailer
shows that Cobra discovers her secret and tells everyone, including their employer Don Pedro, that "Julián" is in truth a girl called Juliana. - Wicked Stepfather: At some undetermined point after Juliana's father's death, Juliana's mother remarried. Pacho, the stepfather, is an absolute scumbag of a human being. He's an alcoholic, unemployed loser who is prone to anger attacks where he verbally and physically lashes out at his wife and stepdaughter. He also plays favorites, doting on the son he had with Juliana's mother. This is because he's extremely sexist, expecting Juliana and his mother to cook for him but also dress him up, polish his shoes, and buy his beer for him. Oh, and he steals Juliana's new, hard-earned radio.
