The new to DVD drama “Julia” works best as a showcase for newly minted Oscar winner Tilda Swinton.
Nearly everything else about this bloated melodrama misses the mark. Badly.
“Julia” tries to be a character portrait, kidnap potboiler and generic thriller all in one. But it mostly manages to squander Swinton’s considerable gifts.
Swinton is Julia, a hard drinking woman who just lost her job and the patience of her sponsor (fine character actor Saul Rubinek).
That isn’t stopping her from waking up next to a stranger every other night.
She meets a woman in her AA meeting who offers her a unique proposal – if Julia helps her “kidnap” her own son she’ll get a bundle of dough for her troubles. That means she can keep on drinking without worrying about missing a rent payment.
So she agrees, setting off one of the more deliriously unhinged series of consequences ever captured on film.
Midway through a movie that should have been slashed by at least 30 minutes, you’ll ask, “what’s the point?” We’ve seen better thrillers before, and the more Julia compounds her troubles with her bad behavior, the more impossible it becomes to root for her.
Swinton, a curious beauty with the acting chops to pull off such a seedy lead role, plays Julia with a touch too much intensity. But that’s in keeping with the film’s screechy tone. Every character either shouts or otherwise over-emotes to sell the sinking story.
When the setting moves south of the border, the histrionics become downright embarrassing.
We’re also left to wonder why Julia would act in such an immoral fashion. It’s clear she hadn’t hit rock bottom quite yet when the film opens, and a woman with her “talents” could clearly maneuver her way out of debt without committing the heinous acts she pulls off.
Not all actor’s showcases are created equal, a fact stubbornly reinforced by Swinton’s latest project.
(Photo: “Did someone get the license plate of the car that hit me?” Tilda Swinton plays a booze hound caught up in a kidnapping scam in “Julia.”/Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
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I have to 100% disagree. This is one of the sunken treasures of the last decade. Taut, terrifying and moving, this is the kind of movie that mainstream audiences deserve but rarely get.