Following the trailer that heralded its premier at the Toronto International Film Festival a couple of months ago, here's a Miss Julie promo for the rest of us. Jessica Chastain takes the title role in Liv Ullmann's adaptation of the August Strindberg play. Collin Farrell and Samantha Morton make up the other two points in the psychologically fraught love triangle.
Strindberg wrote the play in 1888, but while Ulllmann's film keeps to that period, the location has been changed from Sweden to Northern Ireland. The drama plots the events of a single night on the estate of an aristocrat. Chastain Miss Julie is the Count's daughter, who in an upstairs-downstairs tryst that would probably make Downton Abbey explode, first toys with but gradually falls for footman Jean (Farrell). Their mind-gamey shenanigans tale place under the baleful gaze of the cook, Christine (Morton) who also happens to be Jean's fiancee.
If this sounds like devastatingly chilly Bergman country, Ullman was, of course, the great director's muse from Persona through to Autumn Sonata. She is now based in America and hasn't directed since 2000's Faithless but has obviously kept an eye out for actors capable of navigating Strindberg's dense material. It was previously filmed with Saffron Burrows and Helen Mirren, among others.
Miss Julie gets its US theatrical release on December 5. It's already been out in much of Europe, but we don't seem to have a release date in the UK so far.