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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: Not Avail
Salesrank: 37027
Released: May 30, 2000 |
| Our Price: $2.82 |
| Used Price: $0.84 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Saffron Burrows (Deep Blue Sea) and Peter Mullan (Trainspotting) deliver riveting performances (Newsday) in this tale of desire, passion and betrayal that pits upper class against lower class in a 'superbly staged battle between the sexes (Detour). With a script basedon August Strindberg's famous play and written for the screen by Helen Cooper, Miss Julie director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) presents a taut and intimate story, holding you with the intensity of his vision and his mastery of nuance (Los Angeles Times) from beginning to end. On a late 19th-century estate, a celebration of wine and beer lets loose inhibitions and innerpassions. Jean (Mullan), the Count's footman, takes the advances of the Count's daughter (Burrows) too far with a scandalous encounter in the kitchen. And over one night, it becomes clear that these two lost souls desperately need each other in order to escape the confinesand trappingsof their lives. But can a servant support a noblewoman, who, without her father's money, is no more privileged than he?
Description of Miss Julie:
On Midsummer's Eve, in Northern Sweden, noblewoman Miss Julie stays home, perhaps due to the failure of her engagement to a callous man. Instead, she takes part in the servants' wild outdoor dances--but her eye is on her father's footman, John, who is engaged to the cook, Christine. As the exhausted Christine falls asleep in a chair, John and Miss Julie begin a struggle of power and sex in which their social roles are both a weapon and a weakness. Like most of Mike Figgis's films (Leaving Las Vegas, Internal Affairs), Miss Julie is very pretty to look at and the actors (Saffron Burrows and Peter Mullan) are excellent. The movie is adapted from the August Strindberg play of the same name; the theatrical dialogue and speeches don't play all that well in film, but are well-executed, and Figgis finds ways to keep the movie visually engaged: Burrows's height (or Mullan's lack of it) is a visual metaphor for their class standings; at one point Miss Julie cries, and her tears clean a streak in the dust on her face, making her look both clownish and pitiful; the screen splits in two, showing two perspectives of the same scene for a brief time. When the servants return from their drunken revels, John and Miss Julie are forced to hide lest they start rumors, and the servants stagger around the kitchen, singing, grabbing each other, searching thirstily for more wine--the effect is eerie. A strong adaptation of a theater classic. --Bret Fetzer
Miss Julie Reviews:
Disappointing 
2007-10-09 - I was very disappointed by this movie (nothing against the seller; the DVD is perfect quality). I saw the play a few years ago and enjoyed it very much but this adaptation is not at all what I was expecting. A real shame.
This is a tough one to review!!! 
2007-01-06 - Some movies baffle me.I want to like them,but something just won't let me embrace the entire work.MISS JULIE is one such film.While I found the actors outstanding in their performances, I was intensely aware that this was adapted from a play.It felt exactly like a play that maybe I would have enjoyed more sitting in a live theatre,able to sense the energy of other people.For me,some plays just simply do not adapt well to the screen.While I admired the unique camera work and Mike Figgis' attempt to film this work SOMETHING just did not work.Maybe in the hands of another director or opening up the film from that claustrophobic kitchen would make MISS JULIE more interesting to be viewed on a screen;but until that happens I feel that MISS JULIE needs to remain a play.
Also,some of the dialogue gets so low that it practically becomes inaudible.I was constantly rewinding in order not to miss anything.That's frustrating!
Well-acted film, but don't expect to enjoy it
2005-05-25 - Don't expect this film about one night of sexual relationship between a count's daughter and her footman to be a light-hearted French-style romp. It is, instead, a highly depressing film about a deeply self-destructive woman and a ruthless, heartless man. Throughout the film, each relentlessly attempts to dominate and ultimately destroy the other. True, there's some well-worded dialog about class and gender relations, that's highly radical for the 1880s, when I believe the original play was written. The strong overtones of sadism are probably original. Although I suspect the four-letter words and other explicit references were inserted in the modern film script.
But the characters-particularly Miss Julie-are so utterly irrational, that I couldn't help spending the film saying "Geez, guys, just quit drinking, get some sleep, and things will look better in the morning." At one point, when Miss Julie proposes a suicide pact, the footman replies, "I'd rather open a hotel."
No kidding.
Simply a masterpiece... 
2004-07-10 - It's movies like this that restore one's faith in the movie business. Sure, this movie is based on a play and some may find it stagey or theatrical, but it is, nonetheless, as powerful a movie experience as this particular reviewer has ever had.
Saffron Burrows brings quite a bit to the table here: the depth of her concentration and commitment to the role of Miss Julie is transcendent and breathtaking. She captures one's attention so completely that there is no hope for release until the performance's end. Her beauty and skill as an actress are unsurpassed in modern times and it baffles me to no end that she is not more widely recognized and celebrated. Peter Mullar in the role of Jean is superb and deserves more recognition.
Figgis' Miss Julie is a more faithful telling of Strindberg's play than the more 'cinematic' Sjoberg version of 1950. Where Figgis employs economy, Sjoberg lengthened with unnecessary flashbacks, dampening much of the power of the original play. Months after watching Miss Julie I find myself still mesmerized and enraptured by its web.
Congratulations to Mike Figgis and all persons involved in the project. It is only unfortunate that more people will not see Miss Julie. It deserves and is worthy of your attention.
Note to Saffron: you are brilliant and inspire me to take my work to a higher level.
Strindberg's Old Stage Drama Looks Exactly Old Stage Drama
2003-09-11 - The original drama "Miss Julie" (sometimes spelled "Miss Julia") is written by Swedish writer August Strindberg in 1888. Because of its contents, it had been banned in his native country for 25 years, but looking back from now, the sexual nature looks nothing special now. But somehow director Mike Figgis thought of pretty faithfiul adaptation of this one-act drama.
There are three characters -- Jean, Julie, Chiristine -- but basically the drama belongs to the servant Jean (Peter Mullan) and Miss Julie, rich count's rather spolied daughter, played by director's muse Saffron Burrows. On Midsummer's Eve, uninhibited by class consciousness, Miss Julie taunts Jean, who at first endures the insult. Then, slowly the fierce battle of will leads them into seduction and contemplation of living together, or the rigid mores of society they live in.
The talky nature of the film is regrettable, but understandable. It is a filmed stage drama, and that's not to be blamed. The problem is this; one, many of us today no longer feel bound by the same sexual codes as they experience. The values they talk about are, if not totally, almost dead. The film fails to answer this question -- they suffer, but why should we care?
But the bigger trouble is this; director Figgis is so intent on denying that the original material is made for stage, that he uses too many irritatingly flashy cameraworks like split screen. And by showing too many of them, and the sexual nature of the drama more explicitly, the film is deprived of the subtle nuance which the original drama has. What is the point of blantantly showing the poor dead bird itself anyway when what the drama wants to show lies in different place?
Acting is good, I admit, but I cannot help thinking that Peter Mullan is miscast. The original drama clearly says Jean is 30 year-old (while Miss Julie is 25). They act well, trying to generate the intensity between the sex, which I find sadly missing. What if Daniel Day-Lewis did the same role -- I was thinking about that all through this extremely depressing film.
