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Who The Hell Is Juliette?

1997, Movie, NR, 91 mins

Who The Hell Is Juliette?: Review

WHO THE HELL IS JULIETTE? | QUIEN DIABLOS ES JULIETTE?

Well, for starters, her name is actually Yuliet, something the feisty young star of this intriguing new Mexican documentary would like to make perfectly clear. Drop-dead-gorgeous Yuliet Ortega is a Cuban teen who lives with her extended family in a rough Havana barrio. Her mother died when Yuliet was just a child -- she burned herself to death shortly after Yuliet's father decamped for a new life in the U.S. -- and Mexican director Carlos Marcovich's camera follows Yuliet around Havana as she talks candidly about the mother who left her to fend for herself, the father whom she claims to hate, her own life of casual prostitution and her friend Fabiola, a Mexican model who once appeared with Yuliet in a music video. Fabiola lives on a very different kind of island (Manhattan) appears in fashion spreads and hobnobs with the likes of artist Francesco Clemente. As Marcovich intertwines their very different, and often surprisingly similar, stories, parallel portraits of two fascinating women begin to emerge. Just how much of the film is "real" and how much is "mockumentary" is never made entirely clear: Marcovich continually reminds his audience that it's all a fiction of sorts, hinting that some of the dialogue may have been scripted, while periodically revealing the crew lurking at the edges of the frame. The effect blurs the line between documentary and fiction, and demonstrates the impossibility of ever really answering the titular question. This kind of sleight of hand is fast becoming a pop cliche, but Marcovich uses it well and the conceit does little to detract from his two irrepressible heroines. leave a comment --Ken Fox