Being Julia (12)

Director: Istvan Szabo
Starring: Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons, Michael Gambon
Canada/UK/Hungary/USA, 2004, 1 hour 44 minutes

Adapted from a Somerset Maugham story, this backstage comedy drama sumptuously recreates the gossipy, backbiting world of 1930s London theatreland. It's full of nostalgic glamour and the sort of tart one-liners of which Noel Coward would have been proud. Bening is superb as Julia Lambert, a haughty English actress whose midlife crisis is temporarily resolved by an affair with a young American who then dumps her for a younger actress. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned her revenge is the bitterly funny highlight of an expert performance that combines coquetry, lust, anger, sarcasm, and vulnerability. Jeremy Irons proves the ideal foil as her impresario husband.

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