Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell are perfectly cast as an uptight but secretly passionate noblewoman and an unrepentant horndog in Norwegian director Liv Ullmann’s Miss Julie.
The adaptation of Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s masterpiece finds Miss Julie (Chastain) starting an affair with her father’s valet Jean (Farrell), who is engaged to another servant (Samantha Morton). “Kiss my shoe” is her opening salvo, and the complicated gender and class dynamics between them make for a heady affair marked by reversals of social hierarchies.
The twisted romance is Ullmann’s first film in over a dozen years. Her previous works include Sofie (1992), Private Confessions (1996), and Faithless (2000).
Miss Julie will make its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
