Shooting an entire feature on high-definition (circa 1987) video may have saved the producers a few bucks, but you get what you pay for: in this case a technically shoddy, low-key melodrama with little to recommend it besides an offbeat cast. It was presented at the time as a technological breakthrough, but it's safe to say there were still a few bugs to be worked out of the process: in the late 1980s high-definition video still equaled low-definition film, and the eyesore of too many blurred movements distracts attention away from the story itself. Which may be a blessing in disguise, because the story is just an extended Twilight Zone episode, portentous to the point of self-parody, about a widow of six years who shifts between her lonely life and an alternate reality where her husband is alive, along with the child she never had. Has she suddenly awakened from six years of retroactive amnesia, or is she only hallucinating? The film (can we call it that?) was a big hit in Italy, so maybe it suffers in translation.
Review of Julia and Julia
