Miss Julie

This movie is worthwhile to see due to the powerful performances of Saffron Burrows and Peter Mullan. Mike Figgis once again displays a knack for digging in deep into a story and opening a pandora's box of human emotions; leaving the viewer to make their own conclusions of the politics of a sexist, class conscious society and how it wrecks havoc on the souls of two vastly different people.

Nothing outside of Saffron Burrows and Peter Mullan exists while watching this film. I sadly missed it in the theatre, but rented it just recently. The intensity of the interplay between Julie & Jean, and the play of chemistry between Saffron & Peter, completely absorbs. No room, no telephone, no kitten getting into things, no knock on the door. A physical sex scene that feels like a mental rape. A servant Aristocrat and an Aristocratic servant: how far does a social role penetrate our being? The air of the film brims with violence, loathing, mutual envy and lust but...no gun, no breast. The emotional manipulations between the characters manipulate the viewer's emotions much more than any weapon or nudity could. The performance of Saffron Burrows is absolutely astounding. One moment you loathe Julie, the next you just want to comfort her. Peter Mullan works in perfect tune with Burrows and even when the characters onscreen are at odds, there is perfect harmony within the player's performances. Through the film you feel as though you can see through layers and layers of this character Julie and at the end are left numb, but awe-stuck. Thank You Mike Figgis, Saffron Burrows, Peter Mullan and Maria Doyle Kennedy! (now, to pick up kitten's fun. . . )

MISS JULIE is interesting and Mike Figgis knows how to make the drama work within the intimate confines of a play. He's a master technician of escalating the tension, whether it be with classical music or an intense moment of digression with the lead. Unfortunately, I found the script to be rather dull. The daughter of the count talks about these dreams and laments on her situation. Peter Mullan sits there, sometimes with his arms crossed, other times kissing her feet or trying to seduce her. Either way, hardly the best delivery from Figgis. The original play just doesn't work on film, not matter how hard the filmmaker tries. Even if the forest, which clearly was a set made me want to shut the thing off. Still, Figgis is one of the most talented filmmakers working today.

Strindberg's midsummer nightmare to Shakespeare's dream. 'miss julie' has been touted (by its director, at any rate) as a new way of filming works of classic literature. The film begins, however, as almost all adaptations of plays do, with bustle, hyperactive camerawork and editing, and lots of people (and therefore lots of centres of interest), to fool the viewer into thinking they are watching cinema, and to avoid making the next two hours of stagy talk seem so much like stagy talk (a recent example of this nethod is the Nick Nolte/Jeff Bridges film 'simpatico'). And what follows, sure enough, is two hours of stagy talk.

Figgis' current inspiration is the Dogme 95 collective of Danish filmmakers, although when the opening titles proclaim 'A Mike Figgis Film', we realise that it's not going to be THAT radical (Dogme directors do not sign their work (although, curiously enough, we all know who they are)). For all its self-imposed constraints, Dogme is a model of freedom - by banishing shackles of conventional cinema, they are free to pursue other stylistic methods that are not 'allowed' in 'proper' filmmaking.

'julie', however, is only superficially a Dogme film. It has the rough texture and grainy look, the disruptive editing, jarring compositions and unstable camerawork. But everything is so controlled, and the main reason for this is the fact that it is an adaptation of a classic play. Figgis can do all he likes to break the text, and in one way the film is a fascinating exploration of theatre space, as if the play was a tangible, physical entity, and the film was a documentary crew filming around and through it.

In the film's crucial scene, when Jean violates Julie in a dark corner of the kitchen, the screen splits in two, something theatre can't do. This provides a number of functions - it (rather obviously) singles out the scene as important; it visualises the various ruptures (class, sex, power etc.) the play narrates; it jolts the audience out of the piece, forcing us to ask ourselves what Figgis is doing with form, rather than simply follow the content; it gives us alternating views of the same scene, although two is as arbitrary as one, and the differences between the scenes are hardly Cubist.

All of this is good, but the text always intrudes. Figgis, unlike, say, Von Trier in 'the idiots', cannot go one way, because Strindberg goes another. The actors, astonishing though they are, cannot truly free themselves, lose themselves, explore themselves, because they have to remember the next line. The symbols of the play have to be worked in, which requires further conventions; but if the image of the caged bird is a cliche, its fate is truly shocking; even better are the images of water, the mill, the repetition of Julie's life, the sense of hereditary bad blood, linked to sex and virginal penetration and death, all culminating in the brilliant image near the end of bloody water.

'Julie' may not work as a Dogme film, or as a radically different literary adaptation, but it's still a good movie, largely because Strindberg's play is so brilliant. Often seen as the source of modern drama, its austere study of power and sex, its sado-masochistic rituals, the magnificent trap it sets for its characters, can be seen in its influence, not only on playwrights like Genet, Ionesco and Beckett, but directors like Sirk, Bergman and Fassbinder. Played 'straight', the piece could be stiff and RADAstifled - Figgis' style does create greater immediacy, so that you genuinely cringe and even feel for two not particularly likeable characters. Figgis doesn't have to do much to draw out the modernity of Strindberg's play - it is all already there - but his screenplay is pungently fruity.

If the film had been less cinematic, more theatrical, some of Strindberg's metaphors would have worked better - the running motif of the theatre, of playing roles (the events are overlooked by a scarecrow of the count), the masque-like intrusions of the servants, and Julie's final appearance, like a shabby old actress with her make-up mussed, lose their effect, although the servants-scene is very frightening and potent in its carnivalesque overturning of the social order.

Strindberg is literature's most famous misogynist, and yet his women are often highly sympathetic, or their plight accurately described - Saffron Burrows' humiliating decline is harrowing to watch, but I think Figgis avoids exploitation. what is most interesting is the nationality of the casting: the aristocratic English heroine attacked and undermined by her Scottish and Irish servants. it is the unseen Count who pulls the strings though; when he goes away, chaos reigns, servants become counts, countessess whores; when he returns, order is restored, deviants expelled. But for how long?

This is a very intense Strindberg play, and a well-executed cinematic rendering by "Leaving Las Vegas" director Figgis.

But this project is "made" by the casting of Saffron Burrows, who gives an extraordinary, harrowing performance as Miss Julie.   Hilary Swank was very good in "Boys Don't Cry" but, if there was a god in Hollywood, Saffron would have taken home a statue for this one. She clearly earned it.