It takes courage for a filmmaker to tackle a well-known play that has already been adapted into films and television more than a half-dozen times as his or her first film. But that’s exactly what Swedish writer/director Mikael Berg has done with the classic 1888 August Strindberg play about lust — for both power and sex — between classes. Smartly, to differentiate his take Berg chose to loosely adapt the play by changing the setting to the 1920s and adding more characters to the original three-character play. By taking such significant liberties, Berg has created a wholly different narrative that touches on the same themes while also focusing on the power of manipulation.
Miss Julie (the stunningly beautiful Nathalie Söderqvist) is the daughter of a Count of some renown. However, the death of her mother years earlier has left her emotionally damaged and searching for an escape from her upper-class life. On the day that she is throwing a party on her estate while her father is away, the house staff is shaken up by the arrival of a servant, Jean (Klas Ekegren), who has been away from the estate for a long time. Jean has an air of mystery and ambition to him, which immediately attracts the attention of another servant, Kristin (Lina Englund). Though Jean flirts with Kristin, Jean also catches the eye of Julie and the more homely Kristin feels inadequate in comparison. This lust triangle (it would be inaccurate to call it a “love” triangle) boils over at the party later that night when Julie decides to break all social conventions and cause scandals by interacting with the lower-class Jean in ways that are seen as completely out of line with accepted behavior.
Since the narrative is set in the 1920s, Miss Julie (both the character and this adaptation of the play) is influenced by Jazz Age culture. It’s no surprise that all the songs that are played are American in origin and that Julie clearly desires the more liberated, wild-child lifestyle of a flapper. She even tells Jean how her mother taught her never to allow anyone to control her, a sentiment that is also expressed later in the film during a scene featuring Kristin set in church with a reading from 1 Corinthians. Julie obviously rejects her upper-class existence, but she soon learns that allowing Jean to have power over her won’t make her any more free from society’s constraints. Berg wisely introduces Julie with her contemplating a revolver in her hands because it shows from the opening moments that she is desperate for a way out.
Another standout scene occurs just shy of halfway through the movie and demonstrates how manipulative Julie really is. With the lust triangle established, Julie dismisses Kristin with spite. She is then shown pulling the pedals off of a flower in a “he loves me, he love me not” fashion as a cacophony of violins plays on the soundtrack, a piece of music that is similar to countless horror movie soundtracks from Psycho on. In a lesser filmmaker’s hands, this would seem completely out of place. But up to this point Berg has hinted about how manipulative and unstably sadistic Julie can be, and it’s this scene that reveals her true nature while brilliantly playing with genre conventions in an unexpected way.
Though Fröken Julie is technically a period piece, even with the added characters it is still small enough in scope that it likely wasn’t lavishly expensive. Nonetheless, Söderqvist’s performance as Julie and Berg’s direction is aided by the gorgeous cinematography of Erik Hassel (and like Berg, this is Hassel’s first feature) to make Fröken Julie look and feel like a movie that was made with a far higher budget by far more experienced filmmakers. Because of the source material Fröken Julie might seem a bit slow to audiences unfamiliar with the play (despite only being 88 minutes long), but Berg quickens the pace during the more dramatic moments, which plays with the audience’s expectations of Fröken Julie being a plodding period piece.
Purists might take exception to the changes to the narrative, but Berg allows his film to tell Miss Julie’s story in ways that actors cannot do so on the stage. Because of this, Berg was able to excise much of the dialogue but was still able to tell the same story with the same sentiments. Though there is an American version of Miss Julie set for release later this year starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell, I hope moviegoers will seek out this version for a less conventional take on the play that is satisfying in its own right.
Rating: Fröken Julie adds the type of cinematic depth to a classic that audiences with knowledge of the play would doubtlessly appreciate (7.5/10).
Fröken Julie (Miss Julie) will screen on Saturday, April 5 at 1:00 PM at AMC Village VII (66 3rd Avenue, New York, NY) in competition for the First Time Fest 2014.
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