Being Julia
Director: Istvan Szabo
Stars: Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons, Tom Fennel, Miriam Margolyes, Tom Sturridge, Rosemary Harris, Rita Tushingham, Michael Gambon
Reviewed by PETER KRAUSZ.
Films about life in the theatre are rare because of the difficulty of portraying the acting experience and the life outside the theatre as a seamless existence. The danger is that the theatricality merges with the mundanity of life, leading to extremes in representation. Ronald Harwood, who has written a number of plays that have been filmed, such as The Dresser (83) a film about an actor's life on and off the stage, has managed to produce a script, based on W.Somerset Maugham's story: Theatre, that represents both the strengths and weaknesses of this sub-genre.
Annette Bening plays a famous British stage actress, set in London 1938, whose private life is much more volatile than her acting career on stage. Her marriage to theatre producer Jeremy Irons is an open one, where both have other relationships. Bening (nominated for a Best Actress Oscar this year) has become unhappy with her acting career and as an aging actress seeks out ways of retaining her youth. Hence she starts a relationship with a young American impecunious social-climber who is enamoured by her, played by Tom Fennel. Into the mix, we meet the ghostly apparition of Michael Gambon (in a device utilized in such films as Play It Again Sam (72)), a long deceased acting mentor who offers advice to Bening, Leigh Lawson as a fellow cast member, Miriam Margolyes as a somewhat eccentric friend, Bruce Greenwood as another suitor to Bening but he has a secret, Juliet Stevenson as Bening's loyal and long-suffering dresser, Tom Sturridge as Bening's son who is exploring relationships himself, and veteran actresses Rosemary Harris and Rita Tushingham, as aunts of Bening.
Harwood can be a very good writer, as seen in One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich (70), Taking Sides (01) the story of a Nazi sympathiser, and the superb film The Pianist (02), directed by Roman Polanski. In this case, Istvan Szabo directs the film (in line with Mephisto (81), a similar tale he directed, which had more political resonance regarding an actor during the Nazi era in Germany) in a more restrained way, allowing the script to take charge (as in Taking Sides which he also directed), which mitigates against the film in some scenes.
Bening's off stage antics are occasionally over the top and unrealistic, while everything she does on stage seems right. Nevertheless, as an exploration of a woman's life on the stage in pre-war Britain, there is much to enjoy in the film, particularly the cleverly conceived climactic stage performance where an aspiring actress (in the same vein as All About Eve) discovers the real Bening. Overall, despite occasional shortcomings in the writing, and a couple of anachronisms in the dialogue, this is an entertaining glimpse into a lifestyle and historical period that is well acted by a good ensemble cast.
Score: 7/10