Review

Review Date: 14-November-04
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Being Julia (2004)

The entertainment media have institutionalized certain occupational stereotypes: athletes as flawed but essentially noble men; prostitutes as lost dreamers with hearts of gold; and those who make their living on the stage as catty megalomaniacs with the enviable power to seduce nations, en masse or one citizen at a time. The first two examples usually come across as wishful thinking, but the third seems to hold water because it's so often propounded by people in the know, i.e., by playwrights and actors themselves. Yet despite this degree of veracity, such tales of the theater are a tricky proposition, because no one in them is actually likable.

"Being Julia," based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, is the latest film to address the world of the stage and offer a mostly negative image of the community that surrounds it. The titular character (Annette Bening) is a British actress in the 1930s who plays to packed crowds at a theater owned by her vain and dispassionate husband (Jeremy Irons). Although rich, pampered, and admired by all, Julia is nevertheless well into her forties and feels a mid-life crisis coming on. She responds to this, as all things, with an ostentatious display of emotion; then, after her fit of pique has been duly noted, she combats her blues by bedding an American half her age (Shaun Evans). This fellow has the look of a blameless boy reared on his momma's home cooking and common sense, but he's really an idle jerk who pursues the delights of high society with no thought of the consequences. His affair with Julia contains the standard incidents of jealousy, remonstrance, and reconciliation and eventually introduces a dangerous rival to her security and happiness: a pretty coquette (Lucy Punch) who just happens to be an aspiring actress.

Throughout the highs and lows of Julia's somewhat scandalous adventure, Bening imbues her with a captivating live-wire charisma that combines strength, frailty, joy, sorrow, and the manipulativeness of a woman for whom all life is drama. (To emphasize this latter point, she is intermittently encouraged by the ghost of her mentor in the form of Michael Gambon.) Bening has long been one of the most gorgeous, though underachieving, actresses in Hollywood, and she is the perfect fit for one of the most gorgeous and overachieving actresses of the British stage. She alone elevates "Being Julia" from an otherwise dull chronicle of nasty little people performing nasty little deeds, and it's too bad that director Istvan Szabo doesn't trust her implicitly to do so. The weakest elements of the film are the cheap shots used to generate sympathy for the heroine, including Julia's close relationship with her son (Thomas Sturridge) and the unwavering loyalty of her maid/dresser (Juliet Stevenson). It's insulting to ask the audience to applaud for Julia's final triumph just because the lesser characters do. The fact is, everyone in the movie inhabits a world that is shallow, deceitful, and cruel, and if we root for Julia at all it is not because she accomplished something wonderful but because, thanks to Bening, she at least plays her part to perfection.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.