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11.9.04

Movie Review: Being Julia

By William Sternman

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Being Julia
Starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons
Directed by István Szabo
Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham

It’s full disclosure time again (although not full frontal disclosure; I’m still not ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille).

W. Somerset Maugham is my favorite author. The Razor’s Edge is not only my favorite novel but the book that influenced my life more than any other. The 1946 film version is my favorite movie. The 1984 remake with Bill Murray was a deep disappointment, probably because I had too much invested emotionally in the original.

One of the major complaints by the literati about Maugham (aside from the fact that he was so popular and made so much money) was that he was superficial. This was often, but not always, the case. So what? Shakespeare and Dickens could be superficial too. But even at their lightest, these authors knew how to entertain their audiences. And isn’t this primarily why we go to movies and theater and read novels? In Going Steady, The New Yorker’s late, great film critic Pauline Kael points out that “all art is entertainment [although] not all entertainment is art.”

Superficial or not, Hungarian director István Szabó’s film version of Maugham’s Theatre is a delightful lark about an ageing star (Annette Bening) who is weary (for the moment) of being the most celebrated actress on the English stage and is looking for a change. She finds it in the form of Tom, a twenty-something American. (“How do you spell your name?” she asks coyly as she prepares to autograph her picture.)

They have a rapturous affair that rejuvenates Julia and makes her life worth living again. Then she discovers that Tom is using her for his own purposes. (Up to this point, it’s a little like All About Eve, but with a male ingénue.) He’s also having an affair with a young actress wannabe (Lucy Punch). Julia's reaction is to see that she gets a part in a new play, and then take her revenge on both of them.

This is the movie’s climactic scene and abruptly this lighter-than-air balloon turns to lead and crashes to the ground. The scene is overlong, overdone, obvious, boring and even resorts to slapstick. Mr. Maugham would have considered it infra dig, I feel sure.

Up to this point, Ronald Harwood’s screenplay has been a charmer. So has Annette Bening, who has a romp and lets us share the fun. Jeremy Irons plays her husband, but he’s more decoration (if you can imagine that) than anything else. As Tom, Shaun Evans is even more decorative but not in the same way; you’d hardly expect to find his visage on the outside of a Gothic cathedral.

Thomas Sturridge (he was young Georgy in Vanity Fair), as Julia’s sophisticated teenage son, is another matter. He and Bening have an almost grown-up relationship (he tells her that sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; no pun intended, of course) that is a pleasure to observe.

Even more fun is Michael Gambon as Julia’s deceased acting teacher who shows up from time to time to coach her on the greatest role of her career—her own life.

As Julia’s dresser/confidante, Juliet Stevenson (who looks astonishingly like Jamie Lee Curtis) and Miriam Margolyes, as a producer with a peek-a-boo complex, add to the fun. Bruce Greenwood shows admirable restraint as a suitor of sorts who “plays for the other side.”

Julia herself takes plenty of hard knocks from those who love her despite her artificiality and theatricality. “Are you acting?” Margolyes asks her. “I never know when you’re acting.”

But my favorite line from Theatre doesn’t appear in the movie at all: “When I’ve seen you go into an empty room,” her son says to her, “I’ve sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I’ve been afraid to in case I found nobody there.”

Theatre was filmed in 1962 as Adorable Julia, with Lilli Palmer, Charles Boyer and Jean Sorel. Alfred Weidenmann directed the screen adaptation by Guy Bolton, Pascal Jardin et al.

Despite its rare drawbacks, in 2004, being Julia is still adorable.

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William Sternman's short stories have been published in England, Hungary, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the U.S. His book and movie reviews have appeared in Audience, Films in Review, Bestsellers, The Drummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and www.movie-vault.com. He has been a volunteer tutor at the Center for Literacy since 1998. He received a fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

© 2004 Me Three