Being Julia

Michael Gambon - Jimmie Langton
Annette Bening - Julia Lambert
Leigh Lawson - Archie Dexter
Shaun Evans - Tom Fennel
Mari Kiss - Mr. Gosselyn's Secretary
Jeremy Irons - Michael Gosselyn
Ronald Markham - Butler
Terry Sachs - Chauffeur
Catherine Charlton - Miss Philips
Juliet Stevenson - Evie
Miriam Margolyes - Dolly de Vries

István Szabó's arthouse film Being Julia is an uneven tale of amorous folly and revenge based on the 1937 novella Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham. Set in the glittering world of London theatre, Being Julia is at once playful and sexy but falls short of being a genuinely meaningful comedy of manners. The chief drawback is in the casting and location, such a film requires an atmosphere of authentic pre-war London theatre, but Being Julia was shot mostly in Budapest and the two lead characters are American. Annette Bening gives an energetically entertaining Oscar-nominated performance charged with varying degrees of emotion. Jeremy Irons is effortlessly engaging as Bening’s urbane husband, and is ably supported Michael Gambon and Juliet Stevenson. Shaun Evans fairs only modestly as the social-climbing Yank; lacking in verve and narcissism. Screenwriter Ronald Harwood also wrote the similarly themed but more successfully realised Peter Yates film The Dresser (1983).

Set in the world of the London stage in the late 1930's, reining West End diva Julia Lambert (Annette Bening) suddenly grows wearisome of success and fame involved with an enormously successful play. Her open-marriage to former screen idol Michael Gosselyn (Jeremy Irons) has become jaded and she falls head over heels for a good-looking young American theatrical accountant, Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans), and begins a passionate May to December affair. Throughout, Julia receives stern and mature advice from the ghostly apparition of her long-dead theatrical impresario Jimmie Langton (Michael Gambon). When, during a summer in the country, she realizes that sycophantic Tom is just a young social climber whose real passion is ambitious young starlet Avice Crichton (Lucy Punch), Julia begins to plot an elaborate and delightful public revenge of the young ingénue.