MISS JULIE

Year: 1999
USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
UK: Optimum Releasing
Cast: Saffron Burrows, Peter Mullan, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Tam Dean Burn, Heathcote Williams, Eileen Walsh, Sue Maund, Joanna Page, Andrea Ollson, Sara Li Gustafsson, Bill Ellis, Duncan MacAskill, Katie Cohen, Helen Cooper, Flora Bradwell, Ernestine Hedger, Martin Gordon, Barbara Miles, Reg Beecham, Paul Duncan, Richard Burnett, Charlotte McLeod, Olivia Coles, Santi Rieser, Oliver Swan Jackson, Sinead Jones, Griselda Sanderson, Christian Weaver
Director: Mike Figgis
Country: USA
USA: 103 mins
UK: 100 mins
USA Rated: R for language and a scene of sexuality
UK Certificate: 15 for strong language, single use of coarse language, sex and sexual references
USA Release Date: 10 December 1999
UK Release Date: 1 September 2000


Synopsis

It is a hot summer evening and Miss Julie's elderly father departs to celebrate elsewhere. He leaves behind his beautiful daughter Julie (Saffron Burrows), the last in a long line of noble family. Miss Julie is depressed and upset after the breaking off of her engagement to be married.

She dances and drinks with the servants who certainly do not accept her as one of their own. A little drunk, she finds herself alone in the kitchen with Jean (Peter Mullan), her father's footman. He is an odd person, handsome and anarchistic, resentful of the class system but greedy to rise to the top. For many years, he has watched and desired the young Miss Julie. They carry on drinking and become involved in an intense and revealing conversation which draws them together as the night draws on. They hide in his room when the servants come into the kitchen and he seduces her.

By this late hour Miss Julie has begun to shown signs of her deep depression and sometimes unbalanced state of mind. Jean sees her weaknesses and exploits them, humiliating her and pushing her towards the self destruction that she has been hinting at all evening.