|
|
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Format: NTSC
Running Time: 104 minutes
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Annette Bening's outstanding performance is the best reason to see Being Julia, a highly melodramatic adaptation of the 1937 novel Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham. With a prestigious pedigree (director Istvan Szabo and screenwriter Ronald Harwood share impressive theatrical backgrounds) and a stellar cast including Jeremy Irons, Bruce Greenwood, and Juliet Stevenson, the film's backstage and onstage theatrics take place in pre-World War II London, when the venerable actress Julia (Bening) fends off middle-age by romancing a stage-struck young American (Shaun Evans) in a calculated attempt to retain some youthful vitality while airing her own dirty laundry onstage in a glorious act of divine diva behavior. Treating life and theater as one big play in which she's the perpetual star, Julia's nothing if not a master thespian, and Bening's got all the chops to keep her in the spotlight. If the film isn't quite worthy of Bening's excellence, at least it gives her performance the showcase it deserves. -- Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great Entertainment; true period style
I enjoyed "Being Julia" a lot. Annette Bening is excellent, totally in command of this extremely complicated character. The final "stage scene" is a display of breathless insanity. Most enjoyable.
Able support from Jeremy Irons, Shaun Evans and the always reliable Juliet Stevenson gives us some very individual characters that only add to the enjoyable goings-on.
Fine direction from veteran Istvan Szabo helps to maintain a steady period sensibility. It's hard to describe to cleverness ... Read More
Rating: - Annette Benning captures the mid-life crisis perfectly
Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons are superb in the film Being Julia. Bening plays a successful actress enjoying fame and fortune even though she is reaching close to 50 years old. She and her husband, played by Irons, have long had an open marriage. They are business partners as well as parents to a young college age son. Bening plays in one hit play after another but she is reaching the point of artistic, spiritual and physical exhaustion. She meets a handsome gentleman her age for dinner engagements ... Read More
Rating: - An excellent performance
Being Julia surfaces a deliciously complicated character, played to perfection by Annette Bening. The movie is based on a novel written in 1937 by W. Somerset Maugham: Theatre.
Julia Lambert is the greatest actress in England; recognized and admired by art lovers. Her plays are scheduled for many weeks at a time. On stage she is professional and forgets the reality of the outside world, making her plays the reality of the moment.
But... she is bored, she has lost the energy and ... Read More
Rating: - Brilliant F-A-R-C-E
People complaining about the characters being thin, whether they give it five stars or one star, are completely missing the genre of this brilliant, witty, delightful film. It's a farce: the characters aren't supposed to be deep, they're supposed to be thin and manic and driven by one or two motives as their plans for love or money make them collide into each other. Every single performance here, down to the fish-eyed butler, is terrific and in tune with the spirit of farce, which is more English and European ... Read More
Rating:  - Drama queen.
Being Julia starring the talented Annette Bening could be the only reason to watch this film. Bening's performance earned her a Golden Globe, she is marvelous and has a great sense of humor to play a woman who's husband is cheating on her. This film is a bit slow and overwrought at times but Bening can do anything so with that being said just watch it and see why she is such a great actress. Jeremy Irons ain't too shabby either.
|
|
