BEING JULIA – Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons
Being Julia (2004)
Direction: István Szabó
Screenplay: Ronald Harwood; from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1937 novel Theatre
Cast: Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons, Shaun Evans, Bruce Greenwood, Miriam Margolyes, Juliet Stevenson, Lucy Punch, Michael Gambon, Sheila McCarthy, Leigh Lawson, Rosemary Harris, Rita Tushingham
A LITTLE ABOUT AVICE
In Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950 Oscar-winning classic All About Eve, Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a major Broadway star who, despite her talent and wit, falls prey to the ambitious wannabe Eve Harrington: sweet, soft-spoken Anne Baxter on the outside, ruthless, poisonous gargoyle on the inside.
More than a decade earlier, in 1937 to be exact, W. Somerset Maugham had written Theatre, a novel about a West End star, the stage diva Julia Lambert (that four years later would be played onstage by Cornelia Otis Skinner). In Maugham’s tale, Julia, despite her talent and wit, succumbs to her vanity when she falls madly in love with a handsome — and deceptively innocent-looking — American half her age. Through this young American’s "special friendship" with Julia, an ambitious young actress, Avice Crichton, who also happens to be the young man’s lover, will attempt to jumpstart her career by getting a crucial role in Julia’s next play.
Being Julia is the latest filmization of Maugham’s novel. (Lilli Palmer, for one, had co-starred with Charles Boyer in a 1962 Franco-Austrian adaptation, Adorable Julia.) Boasting a cast that includes Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons, Bruce Greenwood, Miriam Margolyes, and veterans Rosemary Harris and Rita Tushingham, and with renowned director István Szabó at the helm (his 1982 Mephisto won a best foreign-language film Oscar), this new version should, at the very least, be half as good as All About Eve.
Unfortunately, Julia is indeed only half as good as Eve — partly because of Ronald Harwood’s uninspired screenplay adaptation (if the source material was already weak, Harwood surely didn’t make it all that much better) and partly because Szabó’s comedy timing feels more than a bit off.
Even so, by being half as good as the 1950 classic while providing Annette Bening with one of the best roles of her career, this slightly backhanded paean to the theater world is still more enjoyable than most of what gets made nowadays.
Academy Award Nomination
Best Actress: Annette Bening
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Tags: Adorable Julia, Annette Bening, Being Julia, Bruce Greenwood, Film Reviews, Gay Interest, István Szabó, Jeremy Irons, Oscar 2004, Oscar Movies, Ronald Harwood, Shaun Evans, Three-Star Movies, Three-Star Oscar Nominees, W. Somerset Maugham
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For those of you who dont know who Jeremy Irons is, I just want to strait out put it out there, he is the most sexiest most intelligent man I have ever seen on widescreen. In every movie that hes been a part of, hes absolutely captured my attention. I dont care how old he is, hes so freakin sexy especially that mesmorizing axcent.
For Mr. Irons,
Keep up with the great job and your sexy axcent. I love you!