Being Julia
The delightful Annette Bening brilliantly masterminding an aging actress' identity crisis is by far the highlight of Being Julia. Julia has been acting for more than 25 years, even when she isn't on stage. The resulting mid-life crisis leads to an affair and semi-comical loss of dignity which lend themselves better to a film with more frivolity. Hungarian director István Szabó (who directed 1981 Best Foreign Language film Mephisto and 2001's compelling multi-generation family drama Sunshine) turns Julia's desperation to paranoia, possibly a hangover from his days as an informant for the Hungarian secret police. Anyway, all the verve and spunk is forced to come from Bening as a result, and thankfully she's up to the task. Eventually, Szabó can't outrun the underlying fun of Maugham's novel, but by then his misplaced direction has already beaten down everything but Bening's masterful performance.
- April 26, 2009
DVD Extras
Being Julia's special features are even less compelling than the film, including two redundant making of featurettes and a batch of uninteresting deleted scenes.