Being Julia

A fun, catty, but altogether marvelous comeback for Bening!

I was flipping through the channels some months ago and stumbled upon an episode of The Sopranos (a show I admire, but nonetheless never watch) on which Annette Bening was doing a guest spot. I had no idea what was going on, had no clue who the hell she was in context of the plot, but my jaw just about dropped for the two minutes I watched her. Bening has that deep, flinty voice and ethereal face, set off with deep eyes that burn like hot coals. She could have been reciting the alphabet and I would have thought it was sexy. In Being Julia, Bening transforms a part that could have been comically over-the-top and one-dimensional into the tour-de-force performance of the year. I haven't seen a performance like this since Diane Lane in Unfaithful.

Being Julia isn't a movie with the most original plot conventions ever created, nor with the most original supporting characters ever. In Roger Ebert's vaguely admirable but negative review of the film, he cites Juliet Stevenson, Jeremy Irons, and others as just walking through the motions of their plot conventions. The problem: not one person in Being Julia is phoning it in; this is a movie full of energy and verve at every turn. The plot: Julia Lambert (Bening) is a slightly aging but famous London stage star who is getting sick of the way her life is going and wants a change. Her husband (Irons) is by her side, but more for the financial angle than anything else. And then one day, Julia meets Tom (Shaun Evans), a wide-eyed American who admires Julia for more than her performances.

So they hop into bed, and you think you have it all figured out from there. Ronald Harwood's script, though - adapted from a W. Somerset Maugham novella (good karma, eh?) - throws in subtle little plot twists and turns that eventually slow down for a second act that simmers...until a no-holds-barred, All About Eve-esque finale that nearly had me out of my seat. This whole affair (hehe) is kept brimming over with energy thanks to Stevenson, Irons, Miriam Margolyes, and even Evans, who makes a perfect transformation from puppy-eyed-Yankee to dashing suitor, and then to something else I won't reveal here. I'm often weary about newcomers taking on the "younger man" role (it was done badly this summer with Jon Foster in The Door in the Floor), but his Shaun is tinged with the perfect amounts of nervousness and charm.

But I'm just filling in space if I'm not talking about Bening, because this is her movie at every turn. She's in nearly every frame, and she's a marvel with the kind Garbo-esque screen presence: whether she's saying a wicked line or casting a wicked glance, you're falling for her. Now, Bening could have gotten it all wrong: the role of Julia is one that could have been Bette Davis-ed to death into a caricature. But she's smarter than that: here, she forms the arc of a woman in control of her life but left wanting, powerless in the face of love, but then conniving enough to put everything back on track.

I have a certain fondness for movies like these (no, not because I like older women, though that is true); mainly because I think it's wonderful when a woman past her 20something prime is given the chance to sink her teeth into a role that thousands of others would dream to have. Annette Bening doesn't just sink her teeth into the gorgeous, fascinating Being Julia - she is the movie, from the inside out. There's a moment at the very end of the movie where Szabo's camera wisely holds on her face as she celebrates a personal triumph, so great that I won't even say what it is. I imagine Bening has had that own look on her face for quite some time now. A-

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