Who knows more?
Can you tell me something about the story? I love to see Jeremy Irons and Anette Benning playing together in one movie. What is the screenplay about?
shareThe film is based on the book by Somerset Maugham. Set in 1`930's London an actress has an affair with a younger man to avenge her husband's infidelity.
sounds interesting! Thank you
Did you read the book? It seems very promising, perhaps Mrs Benning will earn her third Oscar nomination for that
SPOILERS HEREIN
Incorrect I am afraid briarcliff1119.
Julia Lambert has an affair because she is bored. Her husband Michael was loyal until Avice Crichton came along, which was before Julia had made a cuckold of him.
In the novella, Julia falls in love with Michael when they are acting in the same theatre company, she apparently is a genius and he is frustratingly average (he has no vision, and not one uncommon thought) and eventually they marry.
However, some time into the marriage, Julia is not aroused by her husband. On the contrary, she is repulsed when he makes sexual advances; thus, due to her own frivolous and shallow choice of husband (he is extremely good looking), she is starved of real passion.
The fire of passion builds up inside her and the younger man comes along and embraces her stifled sexuality. He takes advantage of her to be sure, but the lesson of that affair was not that she went in to the affair blinded by her own self importance as an actress (she concentrates so hard on acting all the time in everything she does, she was not wise to the fact that Tom was merely acting a part with her), but that her real love lay not in the body or spirit of that young man, but in the role she was allowed to play when she was with him. In other words, Maugham leads us to believe that Julia wept not for Tom, but for the lost part of '"Julia Lambert", the actress sleeping with a man half her age.'
The conclusion of the film follows up on an idea of Maugham's which occurred in the novella, when a more mature Roger (who should have been ginger haired and less handsome) challenges his mother that she is never playing anything other than a role. I was a bit disappointed that it was left out of the film, but no matter;
Roger to Julia:" ...When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there."
It was an interesting idea and the half smile at the end of the feature when she sat appropriately alone in the restaurant was a frightened one; she really did worry whether the real Julia Lambert had ever existed.