Review: Being Julia (*** 1/2)

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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