Being Julia Reviews

Vivid, sharp-tongued and gloriously synthetic from crown to toenail, this rich slab of top-of-the-line theatrical cheese, adapted by playwright Ronald Harwood from W. Somerset Maugham's sublimely melodramatic Theatre, is ripe to perfection and perfectly served up by Annette Bening, whose delivery is pitched flawlessly between art and artifice. London, 1938: Acclaimed, adored and still radiantly beautiful in the right light, Julia Lambert (Bening) is surrounded by fans and flatterers, but painfully aware that her days as the toast of the West End are numbered and her future holds only a gently sloping descent into dour supporting turns as mothers, schoolmistresses and spinster aunts. Isolated and wary of petty gossip, Julia has few friends besides her sharp-tongued dresser (the ever-glorious Juliet Stevenson) and her long-dead mentor, regional-theater hambone Jimmie Langton (Michael Gambon), who set her on the road to stardom and wisps around the wings of her life, dispensing acerbic advice from the afterworld. Julia's serious-minded son (Tom Sturridge) has started college, her handsome, equally vain husband and manager, Michael Gosselyn (Jeremy Irons), has a roving eye and, worst of all, Julia's life in the theater has begun to lose its shimmer. Enter the juvenile distraction, penniless, starstruck American Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans), whose ruthless pragmatism shines through the stars in his eyes. Julia's affair with the fresh-faced Fennel rekindles her joie de vivre — until she discovers that he hopes to use his influence to further the career of disingenuous ingenue Avice Crichton (Lucy Punch). But Julia is more than a match for any Eve Harrington, even one as blond and buttery as Avice, and patiently plots her vengeance with a panache worthy of the brightest star in the firmament. Sumptuously costumed and luxuriously designed, Hungarian director Istvan Szabo's unabashed valentine to the luxuriantly satisfying pleasures of tub-thumping melodrama rests on Bening's creamy shoulders, a burden she bears as lightly as a perfectly pleated Fortuny gown. Sweeping through a series of splendidly appointed tableaux with an imperious shrug and an inscrutable smile, Bening's Julia is a surprisingly subtle creation; her studied, utterly artificial mannerisms reveal more emotional nuance than many more superficially naturalistic performances. A tour de force and an utter delight, studded with priceless supporting bits by Miriam Margolyes, Maury Chaykin, Rosemary Harris and Rita Tushingham, each of whom steals at least one richly deserved moment in the spotlight.