Julia (2009)

Tilda Swinton is one of cinema's finest actors. She has quite a resume. She can do just about anything ... except for an American accent. Combine the exaggerated r's and overly-wrung pronunciations with endless hysteria, Swinton overplays her hand with this role. On one hand, it's a bravura performance. But by half way I had to hit pause to take a break from the shrieking. Swinton has such difficult time with the accent that the demands of screaming and yelling make her become grating. I blame the director. He is not an actor's director. Another actor, Kate del Castillo, gives one of the most annoying performances of all time. It is simply atrocious. The rest of the cast fares much better. Despite my reservations about Swinton's accent and outsized performance, she does prevail. By the end, her character softens considerably and Swinton is allowed to shine. The director comes through, too with a fine second half and saves the movie. Too bad about the first half.

An outstanding film, Julia is full of improbable plot twists, failures, missteps, and desperation.Tilda Swinton stars as a woman at the end of her rope and probably, at the end of her life. Her despair and desperation in the throes of alcoholism are so real and so painful to watch. Julia is in pain from which she'll never recover, pain she's stopped trying to recover from because it's just too hard. Then Julia gets an offer she can't refuse. A sane, rational person would recognize the insanity and illogic from the beginning, but Julia is not sane or rational. And so the journey begins.Fantastic acting by the entire cast, and Tilda Swinton shines above them all. Gritty and realistic sets that reflect the characters in them to perfection. Relentless plot twists and turns that leave you wondering when Julia will take that final step of desperation. A slow blossoming of tenderness in a swamp of despair, an unexpected scene of real love where you thought love could never be, and then, you're thrown off the train at last.Highly recommended.

Julia (2008)A hard edged tale of a woman pushed by her own desperation into crimes over her head. Tilda Swinton lets it rip here, in a vivid, color, cinema-verite style that depends as much on making you uneasy as anything. The characters are so believable, and the sequence of events stumbles along with such perfect inelegance (to say the least), you hate to see it all because what happens is pretty awful. The ground covered is a believable version of what an ordinary person with seemingly good moral structure is driven to by circumstance. In this case, it's about being pushed by her own sorry life to do something that breaks out of it. But it also begins as a curious compassion, a genuine skepticism overwhelmed by the possibilities. By thinking, why not? And of course, why not then becomes all too clear. It's this sense that it could by a stretch happen to you or me (hopefully not, but in theory) that gives the movie its chilling penetration.And the ending, as sensational as it gets, is a logical outcome of where we began, and there is a kind of victory, but it's no Hollywood ending, and that's a huge relief. Rather, it's as if you went along with a woman for the adventure of her life and it's the real thing, nothing held back, including disbelief, fear, violence, and sometimes, thankfully, a glimmer of hope. Very very well made--acting, writing, filming--but not everyone's cup of tea because it is so unsettling.

Tilda Swinton has to be one of the most interesting actresses of her generation. When we first meet her here as Julia she is a cynical, down-and-out alcoholic whose life consists of getting drunk in a bar in the evenings and then sleeping with whomever she can attract for the night. But Julia realizes that her life is going nowhere and her desire for money leads her to misadventures, to understate the matter. We think that this is going to be a tale of redemption, and it does touch on how the relationship that develops between kidnapper and kidnapped changes Julia, but by the end, after murders, lies, kidnappings, double-crossings, and more drinking, it is hard to admire Julia too much when she displays a bit of compassion for the boy she in fact kidnapped.Swinton did not mail this one in--she goes at the role giving 100%. I just wish she had chosen to apply her considerable talent to material with a stronger message than, "Oh! what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!" But, with such a blistering performance she creates a memorable character and I could only stand back in appreciation.The supporting cast is good, including the child actor Aiden Gould. The pacing kept my interest to the point where I didn't think about the major plot holes until after the movie was over.