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 Ullmann adapted and directed the film, which opens in limited
release on Friday, from Swedish playwright August Strindberg's
play of the same name. It depicts the social restraints and
struggle for dominance between a woman and her father's valet on
Midsummer's Eve, a celebration of the summer solstice.
"There is so much we have in common today with what was
happening then, although it looks different today," Ullmann, 75,
said in an interview. "The unfairness of how people are living
today, compared to the unfairness of how people were living
then, it is not better today."
Oscar-nominee Jessica Chastain ("Zero Dark Thirty") is the
haughty, lonely and fragile Miss Julie. The daughter of an Irish
nobleman, she alternatively flirts with and then insults her
father's handsome, aspiring and well-traveled valet, John,
played by Irish actor Colin Farrell ("In Bruges").
On Midsummer's Eve, while the servants are celebrating and the
master is away, the pair drink, dance, battle, tease and taunt
each other and make love, which leads to tragic circumstances.
British actress Samantha Morton, nominated for Academy Awards
for "In America" and "Sweet and Lowdown," is Kathleen, the pious
cook and John's fiance, who witnesses his charged relationship
with Miss Julie.
The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film
Festival, is set in a castle on a sprawling country estate where
the servants had to enter and leave through a tunnel so they
wouldn't be seen.
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Ullmann said she was directing the Tennessee Williams play "A
Streetcar Named Desire" in Australia when she realized how much he
had been influenced by Strindberg.
"So, I started to read 'Miss Julie' and saw why Williams loved
Strindberg," she explained.
When given the opportunity to write and direct a film, she knew it
had to be "Miss Julie."
Although the trade magazine Variety found the acting impressive, it
said Ullmann's adaptation of the Strindberg classic fails to work on
film.
"There's much to admire in the performances of Jessica Chastain,
Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton, embodying a psychosexual triangle
that implodes during a few hours' span, but admiration rather than
emotional involvement is the most one feels here," it added.
(Editing by Eric Kelsey and James Dalgleish)
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