During 1890, in Fermanagh, during the mid-summer night, Julie, daughter of the count, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, faced a difficult situation when she tried to seduce her father's servant, John. It seems that both of them had a host of tempting roles and roles, bullying, brutality, and giving, while their intimacy led to truly desperate plans.
The film has a singular focus on these characters and their power struggles of class and gender, but fails to ever feel like it's really going anywhere.
"Miss Julie" is a rather strange experience, with its consistently static medium shots of the three actors, as they roar their lines at one another. But it has an undeniable power.
Miss Julie's acid dialogue and sardonic twists burn down to the bone of costume drama's fattened arm, its darkness closer to original-series Upstairs Downstairs than to polished one-percenter porno Downton Abbey.
Morton, one of the least artificial actresses in the world, charts her character's heartbreak without any of the self-pity normally assigned to ordinary women.
It starts off as a will-they-won't-they as to whether Chastain's baron's daughter will sleep with Farrell. It ends up as a will-they-won't-they ever shut up. Should have been called Shouting Miss Julie.
