Comparing Almodovar's film Julieta with the source stories in Munro's Runaway

After watching Almodovar's excellent film, Julieta (2016), I went back a re-read the 3 Alice Munro stories that A used as the source for his screenplay - three single-word-titled stories in her 2004 collection, Runaway (can only remember the title of the 3rd, Silence, which oddly is the title of Scorcese's excellent most-recent film; titles have been Munro's single flaw as a writer). A # of things strike me: First of all, I'm surprised at A's fidelity to the source material, picking up virtually all of the scenes in the 3 stories for his film. Of course he transposed the film into a setting in contemporary Spain, but he even goes so far as to make the fishing village where the eponymous Julieta (Juliet, in Munro's stories) settles and has her child (Penelope, in the stories) a remote location in NW Spain (parallel to the NW American setting of the stories). There are differences between the 2 treatments, however. A devotes a lot more attention the Julieta's contemporary life in Madrid, and in fact begins the movie with J as a 50ish, stylish, intellectual woman in Madrid and with the encounter w/ her daughter's childhood friend, which is near the end of Munro's mostly linear narration. Second, Munro emphasizes that Juliet is a sort of dorky, sexually inexperienced young woman; A keeps the info that she's a classics teacher in a h.s., and even shows her teaching a class (quite effectively), but his young Julieta is a cool teacher and very pretty, not dorky at all. Third, J's visit with young daughter in tow to her parents' rural home is a much bigger part of Munro's stories - in fact, it's the entire 2nd story - and in the Munro stories the parents, or at least the mother, as devout and are disturbed by the fact that her daughter has never married the father of her child; that's not a factor at all in A's film - his whole metier is more hip, multicultural, vibrant contemporary Spain, whereas Munro's stories seem to be set in the 50s or so, in a much more provincial Canada (though published in the early 21st century, they clearly draw on the world of Munro's youth, as so much of her fiction does). 4th, the disappearance of the daughter - though it strains credibility somewhat in both versions - is a little more grounded and explicable in Munro's, as we can almost accept that the daughter is seeking a spiritual dimension to her life that is absent in her birth family. In the A film her disappearance seems even more odd, perhaps driven only by anger at her mother for - perhaps - driving her father to his death (in both versions, they had an argument about his infidelity just before his fatal fishing expedition). Finally, a bit of a spoiler here, A's version, tho by no means a "Hollywood ending" and still leaving much uncertain, ends with J receiving from her daughter the daughter's address (unclear what her daughter's life has been like, though there are hints perhaps of a cult or a ascetic sect) and embarking on a visit to her, whereas Munro's ending is darker - J learns a bit about her daughter's fate (it seems she is living a prosperous life, w/ husband and 5 children, in a remote part of Canada) thru her chance encounter w/ the childhood friend, but J never gets any word from her daughter at all.

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