Being Julia

One of the best movies from this year’s Telluride Film Festival is Being Julia, based on a novel by Somerset Maugham, about the London theater scene of the 1930s. Annette Bening gives a wonderful and memorable performance as an actress who finds herself fighting for relevance among an ever-younger crowd of competitors. She draws life from her affair with young Tom (Shaun Evans), a man nearly half her age, but when he chases the next skirt to come along, Julia becomes jealous, and maybe just a bit disgusted by her own jealousy. When she calms her raging thunderclouds and shows nothing but blue skies, her friends aren’t fooled and start filling sandbags for the storm they are sure will come.