A celebrated 1930s stage actress who was born in the previous century visits her impresario husband at his London office. She is furious because she wants to stop the play she is currently starring in. Her husband reminds her that stopping the play in the middle of its run would cost them both a lot of money. “Everything is so tedious,” she says. “I want something to happen.” Her husband asks “What?”. “I wish I knew,” she says dryly, puckering her red lips. The husband then informs her that a good-looking American lad has arrived and that he wants to learn the trade. “What has that got to with me?” the haughty actress wonders. “He admires you tremendously,” her husband replies. “Oh,” she says, her eyes lightening up, “He sounds frightfully intelligent”.

 

Would that not be the perfect opening for a film about an older stage actress who finally finds her passions and vitality again through love and its woes?  This scene is indeed the opening of such a film: the work is called Being Julia, was directed by Hungarian veteran helmer István Szabó and was written by Ronald Harwood, who adapted the novella Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham. Being Julia never goes back to the economy of the opening scene, in which a few phrases convey so much information; instead it fans out to become a character study of Julia, which seems appropriate seen the title of the film. In an extraordinary performance, American film actress Annette Bening becomes the English stage actress Julia, seemingly without any effort. We are enthralled by her performance from beginning to end and for a film that is essentially a character study this is already half the way to success.

 

It is noteworthy that Bening’s performance is in fact a performance as a performance. Julia’s life seems to be about performing, on stage as well as off stage. She has been taught that real life does not exist. According to her teenage son Roger (Tom Sturridge) Julia as a person does not exist either; she is always performing, recycling lines and attitudes from her characters even in real life. Of course the pleasure of watching such a person is trying to discover what, if anything, remains of Julia underneath the facade of the perennially 25-year-old and tragically flawed characters that she impersonates so well. We notice her fondness for beer rather than wine or champagne, her constant fishing for compliments and her foul mouth once she is backstage. What else comes from her own rather than a playwright's mind?

 

Julia’s husband Michael, played by a stoic Jeremy Irons, and Julia herself have an interesting open’relationship, where both respect and care for each other and both have their little adventures on the side. Julia’s infatuation with the good looking American called Tom Fennel (played by an equally good looking Brit called Shaun Evans) lights up her life. She becomes a joy to everyone around her and finds reasons to laugh heartily for minutes on end. Of course there is always the possibility that the penniless Tom is a gold-digger, but thinking about that might spoil the fun.

 

What happens in the show-stopping finale I will not reveal here, suffice it to say that it is both perfectly natural to Julia’s nature and completely ironic. Harwood’s script, Bening’s acting and István Szabó’s direction make Being Julia a perfectly light comedic soufflé that is not intimidated by the character’s darker undercurrents. All the other characters are rather two-dimensional compared to Julia, and perhaps the film could have benefited from a fifteen minute trim, but like a good friend who stays too long for one evening, you are quick to forgive these small shortcomings because on the whole there are very few people as interesting and tragicomically funny as her.

 

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