Julia

IMDb
A neo-noir revenge thriller centering on Julia Shames, who after suffering a brutal trauma, falls prey to an unorthodox form of therapy to restore herself.


CultureCrypt

Summary:

Sexually assaulted and left for dead, a shy nurse undergoes a radical transformation to take revenge against the men who attacked her.

Review:

The straight-lined pout, plastic-framed glasses, and a face trying to hide behind hair that just isn’t long enough say a lot about who Julia is.  Shy, introverted, reserved, and an easy mark.  That’s precisely how Piers recognizes Julia as the perfect prey for he and his pals to seduce, drug, assault, and dump by the water for the tide to dispose of the evidence.

But Julia doesn’t play dead very well.  Up she rises both literally and figuratively as Julia undergoes a transformative reawakening with the aid of a controversial doctor and his cabal of reprogrammed female agents.  One problem though.  Dr. Sgundud doesn’t want Julia to take revenge against her attackers, as that would be counterproductive to the goal of his radical therapy program.  Except the more confidently independent that Julia becomes, the less concern she has for following anyone’s instructions outside of her own.

“Julia” debuted in the U.S. with a festival circuit tour that saw the film taking home trophies including “Best Actress” for star Ashley C. Williams at Screamfest and “Best Picture” at the Orlando Film Festival.  Take a look at numerous reviews and you’ll find more than one instance of the phrase “tour de force” and top scores awarded with overwhelming praise.  This is not one of those reviews.  “Julia” is a movie confused for being more important than it really is because it contains controversial subject matter glossed by overwrought visual sheen.  The reality is that “Julia” is all surface and little substance.

“Julia” doesn’t take place in this reality.  It takes place in some bizarre “Blade Runner” rape-revenge fantasy setting.  We’re talking the type of subdued cyberpunk environment where steam rises from the streets, cigarette smoke wafts through every room, interiors are so artistically vandalized that even toilet seats have graffiti, and the entire thing is lit by rich red and green lights shining through venetian blinds.  There are even Chinatown-set scenes and a finale culminating in NYC’s version of LA’s Bradbury Building, just in case a blind person missed the other myriad Ridley Scott influences.

It isn’t that the production design is unoriginal.  It is that it is so heavy handed that it mires the movie in an overinflated sense of cinematic self-importance.  Thumping beats accompany alternating nightclub lights as Julia sheds her coat in slow motion.  She and her lesbian lover make out, also in slow motion, while one of them is covered in blood.  Symbolism draws so much attention to itself as to lose the point of being symbolic.  And the film’s look is so hyperstylized with Argento-esque lighting, slow zooms, and sequences set to Mozart music that it would be ludicrous to take seriously.

Fiction-wise, the film is set in a world populated only by misogynistic men.  Julia is trained to be a Natasha Romanov-like street vigilante who seduces men and stabs them in dark alleyways as a penalty for succumbing to her sexual charms.  In law enforcement, that is called entrapment.  In “Julia,” it is merely part of the story’s inference that every guy in a bar who returns the suggestive gaze of a woman offering a come hither stare is only one beer away from committing rape.  Therefore, he deserves a blade in his belly.

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