REVIEWED - BEING JULIA: Hungarian director István Szabó's predilection for dramatic subjects set in a theatrical milieu - from the spellbinding Faustian drama of Mephisto to the misguided contrivances of Meeting Venus - continues with Being Julia, adapted from the Somerset Maugham novella, Theatre, writes Michael Dwyer.

The film is anchored in a radiant, wonderfully spirited central performance from the versatile Annette Bening as Julia Lambert, a popular theatrical diva in pre-war late-1930s London. Julia and her mildly lecherous impresario husband (an urbane Jeremy Irons) have such a happy marriage, she says, because they lead separate lives, generally with sexual partners much younger than themselves.

In her unstinting vanity - her bedroom is lined with frequently used mirrors - Julia allows herself to fall for an ostensibly obsequious but cunning young American seducer (Shaun Evans); perhaps because he was English in the novella, his nationality is gratingly underlined in Ronald Harwood's screenplay by lines such as "Gee, that's swell".

The scene is set for an extended finale when revenge is served cold and live on stage, as Julia chews up the scenery for the movie's most satisfying sequence, and Bening seizes the opportunity with a vice grip and bows out on a tour-de-force display of star power - and undisguised sadism.