MovieMartyr.com

Centered on what might be the most incredibly botched kidnapping ever to be put on celluloid, Erick Zonca’s uncharacterizable Julia is at once a marvel of screen acting, an unthinkably black comedy, and one of the few truly nail-biting suspense films to emerge this decade. Anchored, for every one of its 138 minutes, by a manic Tilda Swinton, this examination of a character under extreme stress is more than willing to make its audience every bit as uncomfortable as its desperate anti-heroine. What results is a remarkably spontaneous movie, filled with illogical decision making and unpredictable motivational whims. Were Julia a character study alone, such sustained rashness would likely be unfulfilling, and possibly disastrous, but since the movie quickly assumes the shape of a thriller, its chaotic nature becomes a defining asset.

The unceasing one-upmanship found in Julia’s narrative is perfectly suited to its lead character Julia. She lives hard and talks harder. Quickly realizing that she’s past her prime in life with little to show for it beyond a string of one-night stands and a drinking problem, Julia is a spectacle of bad judgment. It’s a role that asks for a big performance, and Swinton, better than she has ever been before, delivers in spades. Her brazenly unsympathetic characterization offers plenty of grit and a complete lack of vanity. In Swinton’s hands, Julia becomes a force of nature, her red mane recalling nothing less, and nothing less dangerous, than a feral lion.

Bumbling fool that Julia is, however, one can’t say that she doesn’t dream big. Thanks to Julia’s endless manipulations, Julia becomes a test of the audience’s willingness to stick with an unlikable character. She physically abuses, verbally berates, and psychologically manipulates all of those that she meets, throughout the picture. Her ill intentions and self-interest are always clear, especially when it strikes her as convenient to feign friendship with others. Despite this, because of Zonca’s unflagging devotion to her, she inevitably becomes an identification figure. As we watch, if we somehow manage to avoid complete repulsion, we become her accomplices through association.

It’s immediately clear that Cassavetes was a clear inspiration for Zonca. The plot and title of Julia nod toward Cassavetes’ Gloria, but this is clearly its own beast. If anything, the trajectory of Julia’s storyline feels like an inversion of what Cassavetes and Rowlands were attempting. Indeed, only the first thirty minutes of Julia could be described as similar to Cassavetes’ work. What follows after that is far too concerned with plot, and too tightly edited, to warrant a fruitful comparison to what Cassavetes produced.

As Julia unfolds, it becomes a genre unto itself. It’s too terrible to be comic, too improvisational to be only a thriller, and too grounded in reality to be a horror movie. The length of the film becomes necessary for it to achieve its effect, as we see Julia fail time and again, her situation always growing unfathomably worse. Zonca’s narrative ellipses, coupled with Julia’s wrecklessness, begin to create a form of suspense of their own. When the director cuts from night to day, we begin to fully expect Julia to have lost control of her senses at some point in the evening, and worry about what repercussions her carelessness will bring with the new dawn.

The ragged energy of Julia, enhanced by handheld camerawork, quickly turns the movie into something of a high-wire act. At any moment, the plot threatens to become too ludicrous, Julia too terrible, the improvisations too indulgent, or Swinton too ostentatious. Astonishingly, none of these mishaps happen. Zonca manages keep increasing the stakes, all the while shifting his film’s tone. Julia oscillates from harrowing to hilarious, often within seconds, yet never feels miscalculated. The energy that is generated here is so palpable, and so relentless, that it’s impossible not to be thrilled by Zonca’s transgressive spirit in realizing such a character. Continually re-inventing itself and changing directions, Julia’s exacting throughlines become clear only in retrospect, but the energy that it generates is likely to linger long after one stops watching it.

Jeremy Heilman

02.09.09