Title: Miss Julie
Director: Liv Ullmann
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton.
‘Fröken Julie’ is August Strindberg’s most challenging play to represent and none but the darling of Sweden’s most established directors – Ingmar Bergman – could adapt it for the big screen: Liv Ullmann.
The naturalistic story is set in a country estate in Ireland in the 1880s. Over the course of one midsummer night, in an atmosphere of wild revelry and loosened social constraints, Miss Julie and John, her father’s valet, dance, drink, charm and manipulate each other. Seduction, patronisation, tenderness, psychological savageness are mixed in the cauldron of a Scandinavian flavoured drama, through the terrific performances of Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton.
The movie, presented at the Toronto Film Festival 2014, just as its predecessor – Mike Figgis’ 1999 version – remains stage bound. Nonetheless the gender politics, class expectations and stifling societal rules, are portrayed so powerfully that every theme provokes a ponderous distraught.
The majestic outdoor and indoor shots are works of art, that resemble Pre-Raphaelite bucolic paintings and Abraham Hendriksz van Beijeren’s still lives. The battle for power and dominance in Ullmann’s ‘Miss Julie’ is intensified by the enticing 2nd movement in Schubert’s Piano Trio in E- Flat, that was memorably used by Stanley Kubrick in one of the first scenes of ‘Barry Lyndon.’
The emotional claustrophobia builds up through the juxtaposition of love and hate, along with seduction and repulsion, between Miss Julie and John, that converge to a horrific Greek tragedy finale. Liv Ullmann’s experience in the theatre – as director – and as actress – on camera – allows her to instil in Strindberg’s screen adaptation the very Darwinism of the original play. Miss Julie and John, vie against each other in an evolutionary life and death war where the fittest will survive: the old aristocratic breed, about to die out, succumbs to the peasant who clambers his way upwards, and thrives because he pragmatically adapts to the unexpected.
Technical: A-
Acting: A+
Story: B+
Overall: A-
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
