Review of Being Julia (2004) by Edith N — 07 Mar 2007

Towards the end of the movie, Julia (Annette Bening)'s son Roger does put things quite well. His mother is [i]always[/i] on. She's always acting. Even when she deals with her real life, she is putting on a show. She's got a fairly open marriage with her husband, ably played by the excellent and talented Jeremy Irons. They're perfectly honest about things.

How much Tom cares for her is uncertain, I think. I'm quite sure he's interested in the money. However, he does seem to genuinely like her. I think he just decides that he couldn't possibly care for a woman so old (not that she is, of course!), and Avice is young and attractive.

She is also a truly horrible actress. Granted, the first thing we see her in is an awful play. Oh, dear Goddess, it's bad. It's one of those tedious modern things that became so popular during the era (the 1930s) we're watching where everyone makes ridiculously stylized movements and speaks in Very Dramatic Tones and wears white makeup. It's silly, but they don't know it's silly. They think it's quite serious.

So of course she ends up doing those hideous overblown gestures in everything. I wonder how much directing she took for that character to stop doing Very Dramatic Tones and overblown hand gestures even as much as she does. One also wonders how many years it will take to break her of the habit completely.

Annette Bening is still an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Honestly, I think she's prettier than Avice, and I can't imagine anyone looking twice at Avice when Julia is around. She'll turn fifty next year, though in Hollywood, that's ancient for a woman. Never mind it's less than twenty years older than I and nearly fifteen younger than my mother! Never mind, either, that she's ten years younger than Jeremy Irons. Hells, she's nearly twenty years younger than her own husband. The point is that he's still going to be considered a sex symbol when he's been dead for ten years, and if she ages ten more, she's going to be thought of as a crone.

It's still silly. She's lovely--frankly, she's aged better than her husband! But middle-aged women don't get to be attractive in Hollywood. Sean Connery can have Catherine Zeta-Jones as a romantic interest, but not Annette Bening--and when Annette Bening gets young Shaun Evans as a romantic interest, we know it will end badly.