What would you be willing to do if you’d hit rock bottom? This is the rather open-ended question at the heart of Julia, an effectively bracing crime thriller starring Tilda Swinton in the lead role as Julia Harris, a 40-ish alcoholic who, at our very moment of introduction to her, clearly has very little to live for. Only truly alive when loaded, she is able to flaunt enough brazen sexuality at the bars to engage in some cheap thrills before the night is over, but when the morning comes, it is with the same nauseous pang of self-loathing that many of us who’d spent our adult years pretending to enjoy ourselves can readily identify with. It’s doubly so in Julia’s case because her night prowling, as the movie opens, has cost her her job with a San Diego realty company.
Prodded to go to an AA meeting by her boyfriend, Mitch (Saul Rubinek), Julia loses her patience quickly with the 12-step evangelicals, and goes outside to have a cigarette. There, Elena, a frazzled woman who, it turns out, is also her neighbor, meets her. Elena, who is played with a manic desperation by Kate del Castillo, asks Julia for a favor. This, as we learn soon after, entails the women kidnapping Elena’s young son, Tom, from her late husband’s father, a wealthy electronics manufacturer who has gained custody of the boy for reasons that become all too clear. Elena is desperate to see her son, and claims that if Julia helps her they can all go to Mexico, where her wealthy family will gladly pay her thousands of dollars for her help. Most people would have been able to discover a few flaws in that plan, but as somebody once said, when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.
In the tried-and-true tradition of film noir, however, this is prime territory for a double-cross, which Julia ably exploits. She kidnaps Tom herself, in a harrowing and coldly violent scene, from a camping trip, and takes off on her own. This is where the real crux of the story begins to take shape, as Julia not only has to think in terms of survival for herself, as she ventures blindly into the desert, and eventually, Mexico, to escape from the police, but she also has to care for Tom, in ways that gradually become more maternal.
There are some shadings of reference to Gloria, the John Cassavetes film starring Gena Rowlands as a hit woman who cares for a young child, which the filmmakers quietly acknowledge in the last moments. But it is to the great credit of all involved, particularly Swinton herself, that this movie works as well as it does. Much of what happens in the film could, in lesser hands, have been trite and mawkish, but the story’s resistance to fall into easy traps, and Swinton’s superb performance of a desperate woman who is still able to discover strength in herself despite all evidence to the contrary, make it one well worth viewing. Swinton, for a woman of such compelling grace, has the rare ability to bring out the worst instincts of a character without lapsing into outright burlesque; I’m hard pressed to think of a time when she hasn’t been utterly compelling. Here, playing a woman who has few redeeming qualities, she is able to avoid all the landmines and present a vivid portrait of defeat, panic, resolve, and in the end, humanity. – [DVD]
Crime/Drama/Thriller
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 8/18/09