[.ca] Miss Julie (Widescreen) (ISBN 0792845455)

From Amazon.com:
On Midsummer's Eve, in Northern Sweden, noblewoman Miss Julie stays home, perhaps due to the failure of her engagement to a callous man. Instead, she takes part in the servants' wild outdoor dances--but her eye is on her father's footman, John, who is engaged to the cook, Christine. As the exhausted Christine falls asleep in a chair, John and Miss Julie begin a struggle of power and sex in which their social roles are both a weapon and a weakness. Like most of Mike Figgis's films (Leaving Las Vegas, Internal Affairs), Miss Julie is very pretty to look at and the actors (Saffron Burrows and Peter Mullan) are excellent. The movie is adapted from the August Strindberg play of the same name; the theatrical dialogue and speeches don't play all that well in film, but are well-executed, and Figgis finds ways to keep the movie visually engaged: Burrows's height (or Mullan's lack of it) is a visual metaphor for their class standings; at one point Miss Julie cries, and her tears clean a streak in the dust on her face, making her look both clownish and pitiful; the screen splits in two, showing two perspectives of the same scene for a brief time. When the servants return from their drunken revels, John and Miss Julie are forced to hide lest they start rumors, and the servants stagger around the kitchen, singing, grabbing each other, searching thirstily for more wine--the effect is eerie. A strong adaptation of a theater classic. --Bret Fetzer

Volatile & Misogynistic:
They say that on Midsummer's Eve you might be led astray by a pixie, unless you carry some Rue (evergreen shrub with bitter leaves) in your pocket. It is also interesting to note that rue also means to repent of, wish to be undone or nonexistent. The impecunious Jean (Peter Mullan) and the insecure yet wealthy Miss Julie (Saffron Burrows) are drawn to one another despite their social standings. There is something missing in both their lives and they are like two lost souls, each looking for something in each other that will satisfy their inner passions. Jean has been enchanted by Julie since early childhood when he first wished to be equal to her. The scenes are played out in stately kitchen of a wealthy Count's estate. You soon realize you are trapped (just like the characters) at the kitchen window watching the eerie drama unfold. Since the movie is adapted from the August Strindberg's play of the same name, the theatrical elements are very apparent. Within the kitchen a flirtation ensues and soon turns almost sadistically passionate. The strength of this story is based more in the dialogue between the characters and the mind games they play. Miss Julie towers over Jean and is unabashed in her ability to control her servants. She commands Jean (her father, the Count's footservant) to dance with her On Midsummer's Eve. All the while she tells Christine that she has no intention of stealing away her fiancé. Christine is almost too tired to care from working all day preparing for the party and falls asleep in the kitchen chair. Jean sees his chance for upward mobility and decides to take it, although he overlooks the fact that he cannot support a noble woman without her father's money and eventually has to stoop so low as to ask her to steal the money and run away with him. Ironically, neither character gets what they really need. This is a story of two individuals stumbling towards unattainable desires. Fans of the Theatre will enjoy this movie although it is deeply disturbing in many ways. Tragic.

Simply a masterpiece...:
It's movies like this that restore one's faith in the movie business. Sure, this movie is based on an old play and some may find it stagey or theatrical, but it, nonetheless, fully arrested the heart and mind of this unsuspecting viewer. This was in large part due to Saffron Burrows; the depth of her concentration and commitment to the role of Miss Julie is breathtaking and liberating. She captures one's attention so completely that there is no hope for release until the performance's end. Her beauty and skill as an actress are unsurpassed in modern times and it baffles me to no end that she is not more widely recognized and celebrated. Figgis' Miss Julie is a more faithful telling of Strindberg's play than the more 'cinematic' Sjoberg version of 1950. Where Figgis employs economy, Sjoberg lengthened with unnecessary flashbacks, dampening much of the power of the original play. Figgis is a man of many talents as he also wrote the haunting musical score that perfectly mirrors the themes of the story. And certainly not as an afterthought, Peter Mullar in the role of Jean is superb and deserves more recognition for his work as well. The movie biz, in all of its forms, produces only a handful of great movies each year-that might be overstating the case-but once in a while that special movie does come along and knocks you hard in the chest and of your feet; stories that usually force one to reexamine the state of our existence and often point in a meaningful direction to the future. Movies are powerful instruments, taking the place of religion in many lives, and as an art form, reestablishing the sacred tradition that storytelling once had before the days of electronic technology. Months after watching Miss Julie I find myself still mesmerized and enraptured by its web. Congratulations to Mike Figgis and team. You have not produced a Hollywood blockbuster, but you have created a masterpiece. It is only unfortunate that more people will not see it. It deserves and is worthy of a wide audience. Keep up the brilliant work Saffron.

Not the best of Mike Figgis' experiments:
In "Miss Julie", director Mike Figgis continues to experiment with filmmaking. Some of his efforts I have enjoyed, particularly "Timecode", which divided the screen into four quadrants with four different events occurring simultaneously. Other works, such as "Miss Julie", I have trouble with because I think they would be better \oor at least more accessible\c if they had had a somewhat more conventional filming. "Miss Julie" takes place in Europe in 1894. Julie \oSaffron Burrows\c is a countess whose fiancée has left her because she is too willful. She plays a sexual cat-and-mouse game with one of her servants \oPeter Mullan\c under the nose of his fiancée \oMaria Doyle Kennedy\c. Julie and her servant appear to hate each other, and this emotion seems only to stir their lust. Sex becomes a weapon in what is really class warfare. It seems that the servant has longed for Julie since he was a boy. Until now, she has been too insulated in her high born world to take notice. The movie takes place during a night and part of the next day. Everything happens in and around the kitchen of Julie's house. The idea is to make the audience feel Julie's sense of imprisonment in her world. The idea works, as the viewer soon begins to feel claustrophobic. Perhaps in an attempt to be faithful to the play it was based on, we see only the three main characters, except for two or three scenes when we see other servants working and chattering. There are numerous references to The Count \oJulie's father and the servant's master\c, but he is never seen. Because he is so dominant in the lives of these characters, I think the movie would have worked better if he had made an appearance, but that may just be me. I get frustrated when someone in a movie is constantly talked about but never seen. I need a visualization. The high point of the film is Saffron Burrows' performance. She is an amazing actress. This is the third of five films she has made with Figgis. I am ashamed to admit I do not know the origin of their ongoing working relationship. Mullan and Kennedy are also quite good. The problem is that the movie never let me truly feel for the characters, other than to pity them. I could appreciate the acting skills and acknowledge the director's daring, but something about the presentation caused me to have a clinical detachment to what was going on. It may simply be that Figgis chose the wrong material to experiment on. \oNote: Figgis also wrote the movie's music score, and it is very, very good.\c

0 stars.:
Boring, boring, boring. Set piece of a flawed, and overindulgent strindberg play, could have been more bearable had this been a play, but in the movies, too sub par actors, no real plot...no way man. Alright, strindberg was known for his sadist relationships with women, as well as his little, oh shall we call it inferiority complex, with upper classes. (Dad an aspiring aristocrat, but a failed bussiness man, mom proletarian and dies very young) He married a baroness, then deserted her, then never, according to his own admission, managed a loving relationship, without the power, submission, et al. with a woman. Now imagine all that transcribed into endless dialogs between countess ( mike figes girlfriend managing a huge fiasco of wooden (over)-acting and stunned grimaces) and her dad's servant: I like you, i am above you class-wise, i like you too, i want the power you got, i am more clever/older than you i ll dominate you, no you wont, blah, blah, blah. Gladly i watched it on cable and had some work to do so essentially i heard most of it, well to be honest, after an hour or so, i put some music on the pc, coulndt be bothered anymore. So, it all boils down to, if you are the arty type with aspirations and in need of dinner time conversations then by all means watch, and have another pointless discussion on nothing, if not, watch a decent movie, with some plot, characters, depth, and not some re-vamped failure of meaningless drama. Cheers.

....:
This tragicaly beautiful, yet ugly movie dipicts exactly what it's like to be trapped. You cannot travel back to the past, the future is just a dream, and you can't live in the present. Its just like wanting the impossible.