Swinton nearly overpowers 'Julia'

Obviously, any actor who dares to take the lead role in "Julia''-a self-destructive alcoholic entangled in a kidnapping plot disastrously wrong - let them not be shy. Tilda Swinton plays the opposite trend, however: She's Bird compelling film Flower of Paradise, and in Erick Zonca's white-knuckle thriller of character, she approaches the removal of the film itself.
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JULIA

Director: Erick Zonca

Written by: Zonca and Aude Py

Cast: Tilda Swinton, Aidan Gould, Saul Rubinek, Kate del Castillo

In: MFA, today and various dates through December 13

Duration: 138 minutes

Rating: R (strong language, some violent content, brief nudity)

When we meet Julia Harris, carousing with a group of businessmen during the happy hour, ugly light of dawn reveals a much more pathetic. Fueled by a fury formed equally self-hatred, cynicism, bitterness, and terror, Julia has no time for the 12-step topics offered by the sponsor Mitch (Saul Rubinek). She is a disaster waiting to happen - is happening right now.

Another member of the program, an emotionally unbalanced woman named Elena (Kate del Castillo), asks Julia to help her kidnap her 8-year-old son of his wealthy grandfather, outside of work (again) and desperate, Julia decides to take matters into their own hands. The scenes in which she swoops and spirits away the young Tom (Aidan Gould) in a quiet forest swim sudden lurch to the danger surprising. We do not know how Julia is able to go, and she did.

These sequences are on the borderline surreal - Swinton flame red hair from behind a black plastic mask - and work only because the actress is so bravely sentimental. Every star was a sign of weakness of Julia, a redemption comes, try to do as we like. Swinton is connected to push the contrary, we do not like Julia and still feel compassion for her living, human failings.

Zonca had a dazzling debut in 1998 with "The Dreamlife of Angels,''a less compelling follow-up (2000's" Le Petit Voleur'') and quickly disappeared from view. Loosely inspired by the 1980 John Cassavetes film "Gloria,''this return to form is not so much as a revival, in English, in Los Angeles in the hard-edged modern noir. The colors burn" Julia,''and vanishes the camera lurches, along with heroin, somehow managing to maintain their focus on the relentless as the story falls through the Mexican border and a series of increasingly violent confrontations with vicious men winding.

The electrifying film that can not be completely satisfactory. Zonca and his star does not meet the rules of Hollywood, which is good (that keeps us off balance sheet) and to a lesser extent (sometimes the movie does not seem sure where it goes). If Julia''tiene a weakness, ironically, is very Swinton strength: You might find it hard to believe that a woman with fierce determination as he could afford to have become a drunken wretch.

She remains a pretty good actress - a great, in fact - to maintain the tension of the film together and to exceed the mark of two hours, and gets off a monologue in which few can see the terror of the once brilliant Barfly who can not admit the game is over. However, a control freak Swinton playing a hopeless case and that the paradox is hardly reaching the end credits alive.