"Julia"

By David Hudson on 05/08/2009

[Updated through 5/11]

"You could hire Tilda Swinton to put on a funny outfit and represent herself, as one of the coolest people you could invite into a movie; or you could hire her to create a character, which she can do right down to the fillings in her teeth." Stuart Klawans in the Nation: "The distinction between these two approaches is more or less the difference between Jim Jarmusch's 'The Limits of Control'... and Erick Zonca's 'Julia,' which is as impure as the tailpipe of an '87 Buick, and all the better for it."

"There are few film actresses working today who can embrace the extremes of beauty and ugliness as persuasively as Tilda Swinton, and fewer still, I suspect, who have the guts to try," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "She's a magnificent, bold, sometimes viscerally uncomfortable screen presence, with an otherworldly alabaster glow and a piercing gaze that seems to nail you to your seat." Zonca "seems to have signed a mutually assured destruction pact with his star, pushing her toward an abyss both might have fallen into" and "the film is a perverse blend of sadism (the director's, Julia's) and masochism (ours, Julia's). But Ms Swinton demands to be seen even when her character is on a self-annihilating bender so real that you can almost smell the stink rising off her. So I sat in my seat, cursed the screen and was grateful to watch an actress at the height of her expressive power claw toward greatness."

"It's a big, all-consuming performance, and in the hands of a lesser actress and filmmaker, it might have consumed the movie, too," writes Scott Foundas in the Voice. "But 'Julia' is nearly as electric as its heroine, a leggy, vodka-guzzling tart in false eyelashes and cheap sequined gowns who tells men she can make their dreams come true, and who can, provided those dreams involve parking-lot sex and sunlight-blasted mornings after. The key to Swinton's performance (and to the movie) is that she's playing an actress - not a professional one, but a wily, desperate woman under the influence who adapts herself to what each new situation calls for, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but always with every fiber of her being."

"Zonca's story is an unruly beast, lurching this way and that like a biker hopped up on mescaline and paint thinner, its unpredictable rowdiness in sync with its out-of-control protagonist," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "From its towering female lead, to her relationship with a young boy, to their involvement in criminal enterprises, 'Julia' is a clear riff on the work of Cassavettes. That spiritual ancestry is also felt in Zonca's disinterest in traditional scores as well as his immediate, off-the-cuff cinematography, which - full of scorching outdoor whites and luscious indoor reds and blacks, and almost never resorting to studied compositions and symbolism - captures harsh honesty in quick glimpses."

"[T]he vibe is much more Jim Thompson than Cassavetes," blogs Mike D'Angelo, "except this film is out of control in a way that actual Thompson adaptations - even strong ones like 'The Grifters' and 'After Dark, My Sweet' - never were. In fact its sense of reckless endangerment is so overwhelming that I spent almost the entire film with my muscles tensed, to the point where I was in physical pain afterwards, which the last time I can recall that happening was my first viewing of 'Se7en' almost 14 years ago. Which is doubly amazing in that Tilda Swinton is perhaps the last talented actress on Earth I would ever have thought of casting in this particular role."

"Swinton can be pretty hard to take," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "She grins like a Cheshire Cat, and answers every question with lies so elaborate that even she seems a little aghast at her knack for self-justification.... She's never sure what she's going to do next. The best part about 'Julia'? Neither are we."

"So why has there been so little fuss about this startling film?" wonders Tim Robey in the Telegraph ('Julia' is just now out on DVD in the UK). "If Daniel Day-Lewis was able to reap global acclaim for his 10 course-meal of OTT sociopathy in 'There Will Be Blood,' why can't Tilda?"

"Building on his work in 'Seule' ('Alone') and 'Le Petit Voleur' ('The Little Thief'), two great and tragically underseen films from the late 1990s, 'Julia' marks Zonca's return to the life of the petty criminal," writes Tom Hall at Hammer to Nail. "But while most critics have fixated on comparisons to John Cassavetes's 'Gloria' and 'The Killing of a Chinese Bookie' (influences which are certainly there), it is clear that Zonca is following through on themes that have always existed in his work."

"If you laughed inappropriately loud at The World's Worst Pediatrician in 'Burn After Reading,' this is the morally unresolved white-knuckle amateur crime thriller for you," advises the L Magazine's Mark Asch.

"Though its surface is much rougher and less sentimental, 'Julia' fundamentally corresponds to a certain strain of women's picture, spinning on the moment where it looks like our heroine will get away with various transgressions - a theft, an affair, a big lie, often two out of three - and we root for her to do so, only to see her thrown into some kind of agonizing struggle, one that keeps her down in the name of maintaining the social order, but ultimately allows for a kind of more moral (and thus, far less fun) redemption. This is both the film's most compelling driving force and ultimately its biggest weakness," argues Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog.

But for David Fear, "watching the actor broadly wallow in human ugliness before turning into a red-maned mama lion single-handedly redeems this exercise in semigratuitous grit."

Writing for indieWIRE, Kristi Mitsuda finds that "Julia commits acts so dunderheaded and morally heinous that the redemptive conclusion smacks of an inauthenticity even Swinton can't quite temper."

For James van Maanen, Zonca "appears to have lost all sense of reality, not to mention moviemaking ability."

"As Julia struggles to survive her bad decisions," writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times, "the film struggles to survive Julia. We never get a good look at her demons, just the havoc they wreak. The stakes get higher, a bad end looms large and Julia drinks less. But her stab at sobriety and accountability comes too late. We stopped caring a long time ago."

Here at IFC, Aaron Hillis talks with Swinton about both "Julia" and "The Limits of Control."

More interviews with Swinton: Keith Uhlich (TONY) and ST VanAirsdale (Movieline).

And at indieWIRE, Peter Knegt lists "13 Things You Want To Know About Tilda Swinton."

Online viewing tip. FilmCatcher talks with Zonka.

Updates, 5/9: Online listening tip. At GreenCine Daily, Aaron Hillis talks with Zonca about "alcoholism, unlikeable characters, the Helmut Newton photo that stuck in his mind, why he's different from Ken Loach, and of course, Tilda Swinton."

Online viewing tip. Damon Smith talks with Swinton for Filmmaker.

Update, 5/10: "It's a mystery how this bold, striking star-in-the-making avoided Hollywood's eye for 15 years, but for off-Hollywood, off-kilter dramas, Swinton has been the go-to lass - the queen of the indies." And Time's Richard Corliss then gives us a seven-paragraph biography of Tilda Swinton and an assessment of her performance in "Julia": "When she meets directors with grand or weird or disturbing ideas, she does make their dreams come true."

Updates, 5/11: "Zonca's 'Julia' is a difficult movie to stomach, but entirely worth the emotional unrest it puts through you," writes Marcy Dermansky.

Darrell Hartman talks with Swinton for Interview.

[Photo: "Julia," Magnolia Pictures, 2008]

Tags: Erick Zonca, Julia, Tilda Swinton