 |
|||
 |
 |
||
 | |||
 | |||||||||||
|
|
Written by Ronald Harwood; directed by Istvan Szabo; starring Annette Bening. Released to DVD on March 22, 2005.  I have always found the art and process of acting to be a strange endeavor. Pretending to be other human beings for short swatches of time, actors have one of the most unusual job descriptions on the planet. They have to make the most deliberate and choreographed actions seem natural and smooth, often requiring that they cry on command and look surprised or hurt at precisely the right moment, all the while hitting their marks and remembering their blocking. Acting for television and film is an even harder task yet, because the actors are only allowed in character for those brief seconds of time when the camera is rolling. In spite of the unique difficulties involved in the craft of acting, rare is it the case that a singularly fantastic performance propels a project forward into greatness. While Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry have all won well-deserved Oscars for their acting in Monster, The Hours and Monster’s Ball respectively, it’s hard to make the argument that their performances made the overall quality of the movies above-average (frankly, it’s hard to argue that there was anything that made Monster worth watching, but I digress). Though they are the most recognizable pieces of any given film, actors can do very little to camoflauge a bad script, an unimaginative and tentative director or an over eager editor. Ironically, the things that most often derail a movie are those things that can most easily be prevented, food for thought to be sure. Adapted from W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Theatre, director Istvan Szabo’s Being Julia is a glorious film that knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and how it plans on achieving its goals, allowing star Annette Bening to radiate sensuously and mischeviously on-screen. Set in the late 1930’s in London, Bening stars here as Julia Lambert, a forty-something actress who has made quite a name for herself as a fixture on the British theatre scene. Performing nightly in the well-respected theatre company she owns and operates with her husband, Michael Gosselyn (Jeremy Irons), Lambert has more money and critical acclaim that she could ever comprehend. Despite her seemingly perfect life though, she is on the verge of depression; Lambert’s relationship with her husband is no more than a good friendship and she finds herself merely going through the motions on stage, uninspired and unmotivated by much of anything. It is as things seem their darkest for Lambert that she meets and falls for the ‘aw shucks’ charm of Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans), a young, single, bright-eyed American who is living in London. Looking at the broad strokes of Being Julia (and the marketing campaign), it wouldn’t be an unreasonable conclusion to surmise that this movie is a romantic comedy; Szabo’s ever-so smooth camera-work and near Vaseline lens do nothing to dispel this notion either. The truth of the matter is quite different… and nowhere near as scintilating as a carefully crafted tagline about passion and obsession will make it seem. No, Being Julia is not a romantic-comedy, it’s a frothy drama about Lambert’s acceptance of her own position in both life and in the theatre company.  Having firmly entered the ranks of the middle-aged, Lambert is still playing the parts of much younger women on stage. As the film opens, she is just starting to understand that her stage persona is no longer very similar to who she is in real life. Men still swoon over her, but she knows that it’s probably a good bet that their infatuation has to do with her acting abilities and sizable fortune rather than for her gorgeous good looks. Lambert’s affair with Fennel and her subsequent heartbreak aren’t the focus of the film, but rather steps along a greater path in the direction of self-awareness and understanding. And that is a little bit harder to sell than that of a pre-packaged concept like the ‘smart date movie’. Szabo has been working in the film industry for more than 45 years now–though it’s extremely doubtful that anyone in America is familiar with his works other than Being Julia and 1999’s lengthy holocaust drama, Sunshine–and the knowledge of his near half-century of movie-making are admirably on display here. There is a slight shift in tone after Lambert and Fennel end their affair, but it is to Szabo’s extreme credit that it does not stand out in any great way. Less is more, the expression goes and Szabo diligently subscribes to that theory in Being Julia; he trains the camera on Bening and lets her turn on the charm. The result is one of the most light-hearted and fun period pieces in recent memory. | |||||
