For those who love the theatre (an unfortunately increasingly shrinking group for unfortunately shrinking performance venues) this film is like candy, centering around an aging actress who needs a new challenge of some kind, who is tired of playing the same old script to adoring fans, who still wants to grow and perhaps find some romance in her life.Being Julia could be standard "chick flick" material, but because Director Szabo has surrounded perfectly superb Bening with an exciting supporting cast and lavished the screen with lush period sets and handed his actors a literate script (with a well-deserved comeuppance for a deserving victim), the film is great fun, perhaps reflecting a theory that many of us wear masks of our own designing, that Being Julia is as complex as attempting to being ourselves.

"Being Julia" is an old-fashioned love song to the theat-ah and the divas who are to be found there. But even more, it's a love letter to Annette Bening, who plays the title diva in an Oscar-nominated performance that makes you wish the film would go on forever.This is pretty lightweight stuff, but Bening is sensational. You can tell she's having a blast, and her enthusiasm for the project and her character is contagious. Nothing else in the film matters except for her, which is as it should be. Certainly her Julia would have it no other way.Grade: A-

I haven't read Somerset Maugham's novel entitled Theatre which the film was adapted into this film. While the film has a first rate cast, I kept thinking that the role of Julia Lambert could have been equally brilliantly played by Juliet Stevenson CBE who was playing Edie, Julia's long-time personal assistant. Miriam Margolyes OBE again plays a lesbian producer in this film who loves Julia almost as much as Julia loves herself. She is constantly followed by her old acting teacher played by Sir Michael Gambon. The film is about Julia who needs to find herself again. She finds love in a younger lover and wanted to consummate with an old friend who kindly tells her that he's playing for the other side. Jeremy Irons plays her husband and producer. The couple are quite a complement to each other. Julia retreats to visit her mother played by the divine Rosemary Harris and her Aunt Carrie played by Rita Tushingham. But still, Annette Bening does a superb job in making you feel for Julia Lambert.

Adapted from the novel 'Theatre', it is about the life of legendary West End actress Julia Lambert (Annette Benning). It's the 30s London, and Julia is getting on in years. But yet her name within the West End circles is indisputable.Jimmie Langton (Michael Gambon) is the ghostly mentor by Julia's side, Michael Gosselyn (Jeremy Irons) is her husband, theatre owner Dolly (Miriam Margolyes) has quite a joyful personality, American Tom Fennell (Shaun Evans) has always been a fan of Julia's acting and it's the meeting with his idol Julia that a May-December affair began.But soon later, Julia found out that Tom is using her to get close to an upcoming star Avice (Lucy Punch) and Julia soon plotted her way to revenge on the man who had finally given her a whole new lease of life.As the saying goes - 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned', Julia really lives up to that manner. She uses her name to get even with the young starlet in a new production she is in with her young co-star.The way how Annette Benning acted in the movie really shows how much a famous theatre actress will go to get her way back. Smashing.