Julia

Plot synopsis:
Julia is an alcoholic on the constant decline. She spends the nights partying, usually not knowing where she is, when she wakes up.Because of that, she loses her job. Her only friend, Mitch, a recovering alcoholic himself, makes her go to an AA meeting, where she meets her neighbour, Elena.A few days later, Julia passes out on the sidewalk in front of her apartment building. When she comes to, she's in Elena's flat. Elena starts to talk about her son Tommy, who lives with his grandfather, because his father died and Elena herself has a history of psychosis. The grandfather is very rich.Elena tells Julia that she wants to kidnap her son and go back to Mexico with him and she needs Julia to help her, she would pay her $50,000.Julia declines at first, but after a couple of drinks and overcoming a few doubts, she tells Elena that she'll do it.But Julia is not satisfied with the arrangement and goes to her old friend Nick, a former crook. She asks him to help her kidnap the child and ask for a ransom from his grandfather. Nick says no.Julia then goes to an acquaintance of hers, Leon, to ask him for help. She tells him that Elena owes her $5,000 and that she would split with him if helped her. He agrees to do it. Leon gets her a gun.Elena explains the plan. The boy and his guardian will be swimming at the river in a couple of days time. Julia should wait in the car close to the place, while Elena gets Tommy and then Julia shall drive them to the border. Elena asks Julia not to drink that day.Julia agrees to everything, getting very drunk before the whole thing. Mitch finds her and sleeps with her, telling her the whole story of how he lost his family through his alcoholism and that Julia should take care of herself and watch out. Julia leaves, not caring about what he said.Later, she discovers that Elena doesn't have any money after all.Finally, the day is here. Julia waits in her car, when Tommys guardian notices that he has a flat tire. He sees Julias car and walks up to her, asking for a car jack. She gives him one. When he returns and puts it back in the trunk, she hits him with the car, drives over him twice and then goes to get the boy.She locks Tommy in the trunk and takes off. In panic, she drives to a motel with him, in the desert. In the motel, she makes him take sleeping pills, binds him up and calls the grandfather and asks for a ransom, 2 mio dollars.They spend 2 days in preparation for the exchange. Julia and Tommy start to interact more.Julia leaves Tommy in the desert, promising him that she will bring him to his mum, before she drives into the city to get the ransom. But before Julia gets the money from the locker at the bus station, as arranged, she notices that theres police around and leaves in a hurry.When she comes back to the desert, Tommys gone. She spends the night looking for him, finally finding him in the morning, passed out and almost completely dehydrated. She gets him into her car, gives him water and then hides with him, not knowing what to do.In the evening, the border patrol finds her car while they are looking for immigrants. Again panicking, Julia takes off and arrives in Tijuana, Mexico with Tommy.Tommy starts to trust Julia and begins to look forward to meeting his mum. While they are shopping for clothes, Julia meets Diego, who offers himself as a tourist guide. She declines.Later she gets a call from Tommy's grandfather who tells her to call Mitch. She does and Mitch says that he has been in contact with the grandfather and that he would come to wherever she was and bring her the 2 million dollars, no questions asked. She tells him to come to Tijuana, which he will the next evening.In the evening, Julia and Tommy go out to get something to eat, running into Diego again.The next morning, they both wake up at his house. Tommy's in bed with a girl, when Diego gets him and brings him to Julia. They cuddle for a while before getting up.Julia enjoys the sun, when suddenly she notices that she doesn't know where Tommy is anymore. She gets the little girl Tommy woke up next to, to help her find Diego. Diego doesnt know where Tommy is, either, but is sure that he has been kidnapped.Anxiously they wait for something to happen, when Miguel, a taxi driver, turns up with a message: Somebody kidnapped Tommy and they want $50,000 ransom from Julia, who they take for his mom.Julia is devastated. She doesn't want something to happen to Tommy but she doesn't have the money either. But she tells Miguel that she will have the money in the evening and gives him her phone number. When he leaves, she leaves Diego behind and follows Miguel. He goes to the police station and her phone rings its the kidnappers.When Miguel comes back out, she continues to follow him until hes at home. She surprises him there, demanding answers. They start to fight and she shoots him. Then she starts to rummage through the flat to find some hint about Tommy's location.She finds nothing, but a little while later, a woman carrying groceries comes by looking for Miguel. On a whim, Julia follows her to an almost completely ruined apartment building. There she finds Santos and a friend of his, who have Tommy.Santos and his colleague scream at her in Spanish and threaten to kill her. Santos asks her how she found him and she tells him that Diego told her, where they were.Julia gets locked in with Tommy, promising him that she will get them out of there.A short while later, Diego shows up. He works with Santos and says that Julia lies, he hasn't told her anything. Santos doesnt believe him and finally shoots him.Santos friend leaves and Julia talks Santos into going with her and Tommy to the airport, where she would give him $1 million.Before they can get very far, though, Santos's friend shows up again. Mitch calls Julia and Santos overhears him talking about $2 million. He demands everything from Julia. His friend takes Tommy with him and Santos drops off Julia at a car.She drives to the airport, meets Mitch, who gives her the money and tells her that hell be waiting at the airport hotel for Tommy.Julia drives back and meets Santos. She tells him that she's not Tommy's mother, but that she kidnapped him herself and that she would give him $1 million to get the boy back. If he doesn't agree, she says, then he can shoot Tommy, she doesn't care.Santos agrees. They meet in the evening on two sides of a major, heavily traveled highway.Santos runs over to Julia, she gives him the money and he tells his friend to let Tommy go. But Tommy gets stuck in the middle of the road. When Julia tries to get him, she loses her gun and Santos takes his chance.He demands the other $1 million or he will shoot they boy. Julia tells him that the money is in the car and he and his friend take off, leaving them stranded in the middle of the road.

Tags: violence, murder, romantic

Review:
Swintons performance is full of fantasy and compassion and anyone who has ever spent time around hard-core drinkers will know that it is 100% realistic.
The entire experience of watching this film is like a binge weekend for the viewer: All threads unravel, reason becomes skewed and when sobriety finally kicks in, you are left with nothing.
But as things go in groups, somebody had already seen it and before I knew it plans were laid to watch a film about a girl who got gets pregnant  I protested (I hadn't even read the review on IMDb!!!) but I ended up watching it anyway  the result being 'Juno' just blew me away..
the story, the acting, the dialogs and of course  the soundtrack!Once again I was to go to the cinemas this time I had no real choices - the other options were Jumper, 10000BC and Julia (I'd seen the other good flicks already).
I knew from 'trusted sources' that Jumper sucked and 10000 BC didn't really meet our high standards ;) So it came down to Julia - I didn't know what to expect of this film..
I watched Julia!The FILM: When I came out of the cinema I swore to myself that this would be my first movie review on IMDb  not so much for the sake of writing a review but for the fact that I'd hate to let a good film go un-noticed!
Tilda Swinton played an award-winner of a role as the ever-cursing Julia Harris, who makes it a habit of waking up, unaware of where she's been sleeping.
You know, the ease with which she plays an alcoholic totally convinced me that she did drink all that vodka during the making of the film.
My favorite though, was the look on his face when he wakes up next to a girl one morning  I wont tell you where or with whom or how, as that would be a 'spoiler' literally!Well, these are the two main characters that really 'make' this film and around them you will find others playing short but not insignificant roles.
But those are the kind of reviews which restricted my imagination as I watched other films  they didn't help me so I figure it won't be good for you either my fellow movie-lover-speculator To sum up, the film has a simple plot that unfolds with time, there aren't any super special effects, no fancy camera-work and despite all that, it still appeals to me  like many other simple films have.
Normally I'd vote for a 7 on 10 for it being so smooth, but I left the cinema thinking about other probable outcomes, as I wasn't too happy about the way it ended It was certainly possible, but I still wished it hadn't happened  but then I wonder how else would I have made the end to this film??
JULIA is one of those films that goes beyond being a story and production worth the viewers' attention: this is one of those experiences in observing the art of acting at its peak.
Tilda Swinton who continues to explore roles that challenge her and her audience, roles that few other actresses would considering making let alone making, and in JULIA she covers a range of emotions and mutations of a character that simply leave the audience in complete awe of her talent.
Julia loses her job over her drunken tardiness and has ruined a 'relationship' with ex-alcoholic Mitch (Saul Rubinek) and finally goes to an AA meeting where she meets Elena (Kate Del Castillo), a pathetic recovering alcoholic whose only goal in life is to retrieve her son Tom (Aidan Gould) from his wealthy disapproving grandfather.
Julia is so desperate for money that she buys into a bizarre 'kidnapping' of Tom for Elena, a decision that triggers all of the rest of the film's journey through crime and sleaze as Julia fails at every effort to 'play the game' of criminal to make a fortune.
Traveling from Los Angeles through the desert to Mexico, along the way Julia encounters 'co-facilitators' in her new life of crime - portrayed by such fine actors as Bruno Bichir (Demian Bichir's brother), a new and fine young actor Horacio Garcia Rojas, and Eugene Byrd to name only a few of the standout performances.
Though a bit overlong at 2 1/2 hours, the script by Michael Collins and Camille Natta is spot on perfect and the direction by Erick Zonca makes the long film always richly colored and fascinating in attention to detail.
But the real reason to watch this film in the astonishing, multifaceted performance by Tilda Swinton, surely one of the finest actresses before us today.
When she is ordered to attend an AA meeting by one of her best friends (played by veteran Canadian actor,Saul Rubinek), she meets up with a psychologically disturbed woman named Elena (played to the max by Kate Del Castillo),who wants Julia to kidnap her eight year old son from her Grandfather.
"JULIA" is a rare example of a movie created IN English by a French director - and Erick Zonca is truly one of the finest directors around these days.
Sadly overlooked by American audiences, "JULIA" is a beautifully crafted mystery-suspense drama that serves as a wonderful setting for the amazing Tilda Swinton to present one of the most resonant motion picture performances of recent years.
She goes all out for this role and I'd even go so far saying, that her performance is worthy a "Daniel Day Lewis" award (that's a joke, but I hope you get my point).While I really loved her character at the beginning, it began to tumble and went kinda downwards from a certain point of the movie.
Awkward kidnapping thriller/actress vehicle for Tilda Swinton.
I love Swinton as much as the next movie lover, and for a while I was thinking that, yes, this was her shining moment.
Tilda Swinton is great as Julia, but her character is absolutely unlikeable; the plot, meanwhile, though harrowing, in places strains credibility, especially in its portrait of Mexico as a literal hell on earth.
Only a terrific performance by Tilda Swinton in the lead part and a couple of decent bit part performances by American and foreign actors are all that save this pathetic film from rating just one star instead of the three that I mercifully gave it.
Except for Ms. Swinton's excellent performance as a disjointed, delusional, dysfunctional alcoholic, Julia was a complete waste of this viewer's time..
The people who don't like it are Hollywood blockbuster, special effects junkies who wouldn't know a good film if they were in it.....
If you get the chance watch this film with an open mind and plenty of patience as it is a long film with many of the scenes nay almost all the scenes contain Tilda's magnificent performance!.
Everyone associated with AA in the film is really twisted and sick,even the lone person that trys to disuade Julia from kidnapping isn't very forcefull.
I found "Julia" to be very odd but fascinating, with an outstanding performance by Swinton of an totally unlikeable character.Even if she is a total alcoholic I don't she'd really do much of what was scripted, especially with the boy.The "turn around" ending is far too short and unresolved.
The film is too long at 220 minutes.The Mexican "bad guys" are way overplayed.Many of the transitions throughout are hard to follow.All that said, it deserved a much better BO.
What I don't like about this movie is passive camera that is following the heroine behind every corner through long shots as well as limited interaction with other characters.
However, I do not agree that is unclear since we know all the time what is Julia's reason for kidnapping: she has no Acapulco or Swiss Bank plans, she does that to change her life.
Julia (Tilda Swinton) is a drunk...a falling down drunk in fact.
Julia has her own plans but almost from the very beginning, Julia screws up....and this happens so often that it's shocking to see she's not caught immediately!For Tilda Swinton, "Julia" was a great film.
It allowed her a great chance to act, as she was THE center of attention the entire movie and it also gave her the opportunity to play a really unusual character.
Unfortunately, while it is an interesting portrait of a screwy character, the film is also overly long and could have used some editing.
Julia (Tilda Swinton) is a hard partying angry drunk.
Julia decides to kidnap the boy on her own for a big payoff.It's the first film I've seen from french writer/director Erick Zonca.
The most compelling aspect of this movie is Tilda Swinton.
After the kidnapping, the movie drags a little as clueless Julia tries to make the scheme work.
Tilda Swinton's acting is extremely good here.
The movie happened in United States and Mexico and good choice of filming sites.
Tilda Swinton's performance of the titular character is so good and believable it just hurts to watch.
Tilda Swinton is the film.Opportunity comes knocking when Julia meets a neighbour at an AA meeting.
However this opportunity offered is so twisted and so improbable it's more likely to be a shortcut to her inevitable demise.I can't stop ranting on about this performance from Tilda Swinton.
A mentally unstable damaged woman that, you know, can not be good for Julia.What kind of film is this..
You want to know what's going to happen to Swinton's character and the boy she is taking for ransom.
I have never seen her play a role like this before, and it's without a doubt her showiest performance, since Julia is the showiest role.
Credit has to be given to the way she so casually makes Julia someone we actually root for as the film goes on.
Not many actors would have been able to do this, but she does it gracefully, and she gets better as the film goes along because instead of just a cartoon that we first saw in the beginning, we see a woman with fears and real feelings as well.
Swinton does sort of transition it, but behind her incredible performance, you can easily see that the script expects us to believe the way this character starts acting differently.
This sort of abrupt ending only works specifically for certain powerful films, and since this isn't, it just left me unsatisfied.Overall, worth a watch for Swinton's magnificent performance, and I was actually more entertained than my rating will suggest, but the film is full of flaws within its story.
This feels like the performance Swinton won the Oscar for, just because of how extreme it is..
Swinton plays an alcoholic slut who agrees to help kidnap a child, and ends up with him on an odyssey in Mexico through a thorn thicket of people you do not want to meet.
She comes up with a plan to double cross a kidnapping of a child with a wealthy grandfather, but the plan goes horribly wrong.The beginning of the film did not prepare me for such a big adventure!
I thought  I was just going to watch an unfortunate woman's life, but things get increasingly interesting and thrilling as the film progresses.
JULIA is a crime drama directed by French writer/director Erick Zonca, his third feature where the story takes place in USA and Mexico, follows the downward spiral of a single middle-aged alcoholic Julia Harris (Swinton), who hatches a plan to double-cross Elena (de Castillo), a young mother whom she encounters in the AA meeting, to kidnap her son Tom (Gould), and blackmail his rich grandfather.Without any accomplices, Julia impetuously implements her criminal activity with the help of a gun and a black mask.
Initially, Julia is shown as a complete train wreck, drinking herself into oblivion and sleeping with random guys, utterly self-serving, antipathy is the only thing viewers can project to this character, it reaches the pinnacle when she roughhouses Tom during the kidnap action, as if he is merely a cargo than a human being.
Slowly things start to head into the point of no return, the script frustratingly allows the incompetence of police force and a convenient border-crossing plot-device to unconvincingly keep Julia at large, and shifts the locale to Mexico, where the Stockholm syndrome swells up, a mother-son bond becomes apparent, nevertheless, being flirtatious and unsuspecting with a local guy Diego (Bichir), Julia's negligence puts Tom in the possession of a gang of Mexican kidnappers, this karmic double-cross will cost Julia everything she to keep herself and Tom alive.Rambling in almost 2 and a half hours, JULIA is unequivocally too long for its own good, but owing to the fantastic Swinton, who is the error-free backbone of the picture and almost appears in every and each scene, it is gripping enough to keep us hooked to watch her fight her way against all the odds.
An outstanding film, Julia is full of improbable plot twists, failures, missteps, and desperation.Tilda Swinton stars as a woman at the end of her rope and probably, at the end of her life.
And so the journey begins.Fantastic acting by the entire cast, and Tilda Swinton shines above them all.
We think that this is going to be a tale of redemption, and it does touch on how the relationship that develops between kidnapper and kidnapped changes Julia, but by the end, after murders, lies, kidnappings, double-crossings, and more drinking, it is hard to admire Julia too much when she displays a bit of compassion for the boy she in fact kidnapped.Swinton did not mail this one in--she goes at the role giving 100%.
"Julia" is not a movie you will like for the plausibility of its plot.
Although I liked the film, I think it's about an hour too long.
And not too many people rush out to see a two hour and twenty minute movie with Tilda Swinton (albeit a recent well-deserved Oscar winner) playing an alcoholic floozy who takes a chance to make a lot of money by kidnapping a kid who at first she's getting done for the boy's mother, only to find herself in deeper trouble south of the border.
But for those of us that would be interested in seeing another hard-hitting drama with Tilda Swinton in the lead (think back, for those who might remember, to the likes of The Deep End), it's a kind of intense bliss.
It's also one of the more unusual kidnapper stories ever told, mayhap.In the movie Tilda Swinton is Julia, who is so bad at her alcoholism she shows up to an AA meeting only to leave a minute into it and stand in the lobby smoking cigarettes.
It's a long movie, but you get wrapped up in Julia's struggle; she's an anti-hero in a definite term, and because she's played by Swinton as a strong and determined 'dame' with nothing to lose we stick with her wherever her story takes her.And while I would hope to give Swinton as much praise as possible, since it is such a brave performance that calls up all of her skills as an actress, foregoing any BS Hollywood star ego for down-and-dirty scenes in Tijuana and up against non-professional players in the Mexico locations, it's also Erick Zonca's movie.
He gives some moments for us to breathe in-between those tense scenes between Swinton and the boy, or in those later Mexico scenes, to really take in landscapes and the scenery, that desert Julia takes Tom to hide in, or the rough beauty of the streets of Tijuana, or even in that opening scene at the bar that sets up Julia as this unlikely protagonist.Zonca's made with Julia a morality play rich in thrills and poetic irony in the guise of a neo-noir, and cast it with an actress who won't make a character sympathetic for the sake of it but real enough for us to understand her every step of the way..
"Julia" starring Tilda Swinton has an excellent first 1/4 going for it.
This movie starts with an alcoholic,disturbed,presumable hooker middle aged hot woman Tilda Swinton,It's OK until then lol..After that she gets involved in kidnapping a supposedly son of a Mexican girl she knew in junkie meetings..
Maybe if they just sticked to the drama(she seems pretty disturbed at first,I mean,one does not simply ran out their cars on people) instead of (try to)show us up the bad side of Mexico in a overacted/unreal way.3 stars It starts well but then fails miserably in a strange way,love u Tilda Swinton anyway..
I think Tilda Swinton is fabulous in this movie.
Even towards the end, Mitch still believes that Julia can be a better person and gives her another chance to make things right.
Tilda Swinton is amazing as the alcoholic,sex crazy person who kidnaps the son of another alcoholic she befriends at an AA meeting.
Tilda will probably be nominated for many awards for her bravura performance.Kate DelCastillo plays the mother.She is very good.To show you how confusing this story is, she just vanishes as soon as he boy is kidnapped.
This film is not boring at all, and I would say that the character of Tilda Swinton is absolutely outstanding; nothing in common with other foreseeable features.
The on-location scenes in Mexico add a lot to an already electric-flowing movie.Just as Jeremy Irons in Moonlighting was an A+ training film in shoplifting, Julia will teach you a lot about kidnapping a 10 year old.
I saw the interview with Tilda Swinton after I watched the DVD and she said that she had just been to a screening and knew the audience was on Julia's side when they seemed concerned that the hotel cleaner might have seen the kidnapped boys legs sticking out from behind the sofa.
All through the film I was desperately hoping that Julia would get caught or would actually see sense and give up the ridiculous kidnap plot and hand herself in.