Being Julia (2004)

BEING JULIA
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****):  *** 1/2

Hello, Oscar. Oozing charm from every pore, Annette Bening gives an absolutely delightful performance as Julia Lambert, an actress who acts twenty-four hours a day. Bening has a lock on an Academy Award nomination and, given how she is loved and respected by the acting community, she may be the odds-on favorite to take home the statuette for Best Actress.

Jeremy Irons, teaming up again with SUNSHINE director István Szabó, plays Michael Gosselyn, Julia's husband. Set in a happy and prosperous London in 1938, which looks more like the Roaring Twenties than the Great Depression Thirties, Ronald Harwood's escapist script is based on "Theater," a Somerset Maugham novella. It concerns a May-December fling that Julia has with Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans), an American lad about half her age. Michael is one of those understanding husbands who turns a blind eye to his wife's dalliances.

When the story begins, Julia is trying without much success to transform her long but platonic friendship with Lord Charles (Bruce Greenwood) into something more sexual, but he spurns her advances. You'll probably guess why, but BEING JULIA isn't a movie that depends on surprises for its enjoyment. Instead, it is one that has you always in the moment, experiencing each scene to its fullest without the need of guessing the next.

Julia is currently in the long running "Farewell My Love," a play to which she is eager to bid adieu. Every night she ends with her dramatic and clichéd line, "He was my earth, my moon and all the stars in the firmament." She is bored and ready to leave the play and the town until she and Tom become an item.

Bening's charisma is so enormous in the film that it surprising the other actors can find any room on the stage. She owns the film, lock, stock and barrel. As Julia's affair with Tom progresses, she giggles like a giddy schoolgirl. Her exhilaration is palpable. And when their romance hits the rocks, as you know it will, she bounces back with her batteries completely recharged.

In the movie's best moment, Julia, with all of the firepower of a jet fighter, annihilates another with "I haven't finished with you -- not remotely." As she trills the "r" in "remotely," sound waves fly around the theater like a swarm of buzzing bees. These are actresses -- Julia and Bening -- who are the top of their form, and it sure is fun watching them work.

BEING JULIA runs a perfectly paced 1:45. It is rated R for "some sexuality" and would be acceptable for teenagers.

The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, October 22, 2004. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.

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X-RT-RatingText: 3.5/4