Liv Ullmann should write a fresh screenplay and forget about adapting Strindberg. Yes, put Colin Farrell in it and Samantha Morton and Jessica Chastain if she wants, but dream up something new.
Surely she is well capable, having worked closely over many years with the late, great auteur, Ingmar Bergman in those tormented, angsty films of the 1970s. Liv was the star, powerful and vulnerable at once in masterpieces like Persona, Cries and Whispers, Face to Face and my personal favourite at the time, A Passion. Along with the films of Truffaut and Fellini, some of Bergman’s creations numbered among the greatest European films of the late-ish twentieth century.
The veteran Norwegian actress turned director is on record as saying that she doesn’t like August Strindberg’s attitude to women, as evidenced in the Swedish playwright's preface to the play Miss Julie. “He really looked down at their character," she told Deadline, speaking of the dramatist who died in 1912. “It’s terrible what he says about us.”
Writing her own adaptation, however, freed Liv Ullmann “to have Miss Julie say things that maybe Strindberg let her think but he didn’t put it in words. And Jean (named John in Liv's adaptation) - let him say things that maybe Strindberg just let him think.”
In other words, she has changed the spirit of the text, allowing more transparency, as it were, to colour the dialogue of a play which was first staged in 1906 in Stockholm. Nothing jars, nothing sounds incongruously modern in this bleak tragedy played out with much heat in the kitchen of the local Big House. However, this suggests that her changes may have not been that radical after all.
Moreover, the fact that the action is transferred from Sweden to Fermanagh is not of any great consequence, and perhaps relates to funding or logistics. The action is minimal in any case, as it’s all about the dialogue in this taut ensemble piece.
John (Colin Farrell) is a valet who has long kept secret his lust or love (which is it?) for the young Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain), daughter of the local worthy, the unnamed Baron of the piece. However, he is already stepping out with the cook, Kathleen (Samantha Morton), a woman from his own class and thus entirely suitable. Now protocol and decorum are about to be challenged, with deadly results.
Over the course of one Midsummer Night, John’s passion for Miss Julie is unleashed as the petulant young lady effectively seduces him, thereby threatening, at the very least, his relationship with Kathleen. Their impetuous act between the sheets spirals into a domestic tragedy, as the young lady becomes increasingly deranged. Meanwhile, John tries to wade out of the sudden mess with a hare-brained scheme involving their running away together to set up a hotel by Lake Como.
Some part of me longed for more company on the screen, aside from the three actors in question – a few more valets, a blacksmith maybe, a couple of sightings of the carousing crowd we only hear in the background. It doesn't help that the big house has a chilly, unlived-in air, rather like a folk museum. The weather is wet and there is a fire lighting in the kitchen grate, despite it being Midsummer's Night.
Despite this reviewer's misgivings about resurrecting a period melodrama for the stage, Ms Ullmann's production is worth seeing for the strong performances of the actors.
Paddy Kehoe
