Liv Ullmann 2014 UK/Norway/Ireland/Canada/France/USA
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Nora McMenamy
My taste in films and the priority I place on some over others has often been described by my friends and family as a little odd. I don't keep to one genre or industry and sometimes it's just the subject matter, the strangeness of the project, the presence of a particular actor or director maybe. With legendary actress Liv Ullmann's exquisitely framed Miss Julie however all three could be stated. The film is of course based on August Strindberg's searing naturalistic play of 1889, originally set in Sweden but here transposed to County Fermanagh in Ireland. Quite why is never revealed, after all Jessica Chastain and Samantha Morton clearly have a way with accents, but either way it's not a change that really affects anything save the characters' names - Jean becomes John and Christine becomes Kathleen. Ullman herself was a big pull for me, a truly great actress with a long history for soul-baring, slightly theatrical performances and her own past life as one of Ingmar Bergman's leading lights haunts her rendition with the tiny cast spending the relatively long running time in raw, mesmerising, heartfelt conversation in little more than a dozen locations within a single household. The cinematography and set design are still excellent but the spotlight is on the emotional exorcism of the one night standoff between Miss Julie, the daughter of a baron, and John, her father's valet, with occasional interludes from Kathleen, the house's cook and John's lover and unofficial fiancé. Playing the title character is Jessica Chastain, a hook in herself and one of my favourite current actresses, fresh from her role as another iconic, trapped enchantress in Al Pacino's Salome and again she's magnificent. Her portrayal here plays up Julie's essential childishness, the spirit of a young woman given everything but only within the bounds of what is socially proper, honoured and outwardly respected but also cosseted and subjugated. Her world is both open and closed-off and it's telling that, when she plans to escape the house that holds all three characters prisoner, she can't fathom going without her canary. Like the bird, covered with a sheet when it protests more than is deemed necessary, she too is caged, only able to sing when her teachers command it. She starts the film literally as a small girl and never really grows beyond it (or at least is never allowed to). In a stunning moment her face contorts in discomfort and mild disgust when John embraces her despite her having been attempting to seduce him for the past half hour as if she is but a teenager unready for his rough caresses and barely able to understand the situation her enticements have put her in. In the opening scenes she covers her late mother's photo with a blanket just as the furniture in the house has been covered with sheets and her ankles are visible below the hemline of her dress preceeding the film's second half when, after her dress has been pulled aside, her shoulder is left bare and she doesn't even appear to register it. Her mind not ever having been authorised to control she is at times as uncontrolled and uncomprehending as an infant, the irony in her revulsion at her dog possibly having become pregnant by the gamekeeper's mongrel being literally echoed in her tempting of and then sleeping with a servant doesn't occur to her until it's pointed out. Ullmann's John is Colin Farrell, an oddly fitting choice as he isn't quite the equal of Chastain acting wise but nor is John the equal of Julie in the narrative's class war. He is however far more experienced, just as John has travelled and lived where his opposite number has not, and gives what very well may be his finest performance, realising that John understands far more about his place and the life of his betters than Julie and twisting between ingrained fear of his master (even though he is not seen the Baron's boots play a big part and frequently remain in the peripheries of the frame like an unspoken reproach) and hatred of his own powerlessness, hopeless adoration and callous plotting to better his lot. Like his mistress though he remains at one level a wounded little boy, traumatised by his brother's death at age eight from starvation, determined not to end up the same but resentful towards those born into wealth, haunted by a love he can't fight against but that is old enough to have been blended with dislike and curdled by loathing. He enjoys the bottle of wine he has stolen from the Baron's cellar like a savant, savours it when calm but later guzzles it because he needs to. He is not fond of beer while Julie simply sculls back both because she so desperately wants to be an adult. Their shifting power games address class, sex, love, gender, ambition, hysteria, tragedy and at times recall the fetishism of Peter Strickland's The Duke Of Burgundy and anticipate Sigmund Freud's notions of catharsis and Josef Breuer's The Talking Cure in their therapeutic cross-examinations. Samantha Morton's Kathleen though represents a different facet of the time, religion. She is the moralistic yet warm elder, appreciates the class differential because it gives the workers something to aspire to but expects the masters to behave accordingly. She insists John go to church with her as if it will cure all the ills of that particular midsummer night, forgives his misdemeanours, speaks plainly, grows from looking down to holding Julie's gaze but knows she can only rise so far. Morton is terrific and in one scene opposite the aforementioned dog she barely moves when she hears a noise only for the dog to overact, turn, stare. Cinematographer Mikhail Krichman only adds to the tension, refusing to cut between the speakers during their barbed exchanges, instead holding focus, again more concerned with the power of words than distracting innovation. The best film I've seen this year.