'Julia' is not 'All About Eve'

In István Szabó's "Being Julia," Julia Lambert is England's favorite stage actress of the 1930s. She has style, she has grace, she's an outlandish diva closing in a bit reluctantly on middle age -- you know the drill. The plays she performs in are pretty bad, which is okay because everyone is consistently reassuring her that her adoring public comes not for the play, but her. \nIt's all remarkably fitting, because Annette Bening -- one of my favorite actresses, "the thinking man's sex symbol" as she has been called -- is absolutely sensational as the glowing diva. "Being Julia" however, much like Julia's plays, is still pretty bad.\nWatching Bening play Julia, who feeds on the London limelight in sort of the same way a plant feeds through photosynthesis, is a treat. She's energetic and tortured, extended and confined, broken and glued-together. It's no wonder she picked up an Oscar nod for Best Actress, and if she wins, it'll be a sweet reward for her worthy career.\nBening's supporting cast falls by the wayside next to her shining performance. Only the elegant Jeremy Irons stands out as a supporting character in his role as Michael, Julia's manager and husband in their open marriage. Shaun Evans plays Tom, Julia's American love-interest who revitalizes her life and her acting, although Evans is so bland and painfully vapid it's hard to believe he could light up a bathtub while holding an electric hairdryer. Both Bruce Greenwood, as Julia's friend, and Michael Gambon, as Julia's former acting instructor in apparition-form, are grossly underused and should have been given larger roles.\nAs the film progresses, the parallels between "Being Julia" and the 1950 aging-actress classic "All About Eve" become unavoidable. Tom's new fling is an upcoming actress who by today's standards belongs in laundry detergent commercials. Naturally Julia is scorned, and sets everyone up for a final act trap of revenge that is both sly, wicked and unexpected.\nFive years ago, as a budding film critic, "Being Julia" would have been the kind of movie I'd begrudgingly recommend for the performance. The first 20 minutes are rather enjoyable, and the last 30 minutes are deliciously vindictive. There's just the matter of addressing the lousy hour that lies between the two endearing portions of this movie. \nOverall, it's a pleasure watching Bening, but, as movies are concerned, one thing is for certain: bitchy was better in "All About Eve"