Julie Walking Home

Director Agnieszka Holland is an intelligent art house filmmaker who makes interesting, layered movies like Europa, Europa, for people who like to exercise their minds at the cinema. With her newest film, the Canadian / German / Polish co-production Julie Walking Home, she may have outsmarted herself. There are simply too many ideas and dangling story lines thrown into the mix. Julie, nicely played by Miranda Otto, comes to a cross roads in her life when she discovers her husband with another woman. Then her cute son is diagnosed with cancer which can't be treated because he is allergic to the chemotherapy drugs. Pretty depressing stuff, but it gets worse. As her personal troubles mount she does what any caring mother would do to save her child - she runs to Poland and finds a faith healer. The charismatic Alexei (played by Canadian Lothaire Bluteau in a riff on his Jesus of Montreal role) lays his hands on the boy and in the process also wins Julie's heart and follows her back to Canada. IN the third act story threads are left to sway aimlessly in the wind, while the tone of the film grows bleaker and bleaker. Holland frequently examines issues of faith in her work, and had she stuck to just the faith healer's plot line this could have been a great film. Bluteau is terrific and could have easily carried the emotional weight of the story. As it is we are left with unanswered questions about where this film stands on almost every topic it tackles from faith to medicine to ethics.

'Julia Walking Home' is a movie in which too many sensible themes as faith, marriage troubles, religiosity, supernatural events and the fear of death are put together in a bundle by director Agnieska Holland. Maybe the great circle of matters is a problem to the final outcome but, in fact, the movie and its narrative are not conducted with sufficient strenght to make the viewer really involved with the drama. All the time the movie goes on and on and the story seems to be restrained and underdeveloped. There's too much artificialism in some points, like the relationship between Julie (Miranda Otto) and the miracle guy (Lothaire Bluteau, in a strange performance) who performs supernatural cures for all kind of diseases. The most strong impression, after all, is that life must be linked with strong morality and family values. In this point, I think Mr. Frank Capra could have been the director of this peasant, conventional and thoughtless little drama. The outocome - maybe - would be much better. I give this a 5 (five).

The Polish director Agnieszka Holland offers a view about a family in turmoil caused by the illness of a young boy. This film was shown on the Sundance channel recently. Most of the comments submitted about this movie in this forum fail to give credit to Ms. Holland for this tale that blends mysticism, faith, science and betrayal that works well. Stop reading if you haven't seen the picture.

Ms. Holland's film is complicated, in that it asks the viewer to think about how Julie's actions to save Nick, her young son, stricken with a rare cancer, clash with the medical science because she goes with her instincts instead, when she takes the boy to be seen by a folk "healer" in Poland. At the same time her marriage has come to an abrupt end when she learns her husband has betrayed her with another woman, in her own home.

Julie sees an improvement when "the healer" selects Nick as his next project to help and asks her to follow him as he goes through the countryside seeing people. When Nicks starts showing signs of recovery, a mutual attraction develops between Julie and Alexei, the holy man. Julie goes home and Alexei follows her. Something is not quite right with Nick and when he has a relapse, Julie's faith in Alexei's ability to cure her son evaporates, thus ending their relationship, as Alexei abandons Julie.

The film is well done and paced. It engrosses the viewer because Ms. Holland knows where she is taking us. At the end, when Alexei has left, we finally see some sense of harmony in Julie's life, depicted lovingly in the last sequence of the film. Nick, is still not well, but the family has come together by the experience they have been through and we see that Julie is expecting a child. It almost appears as though Nick will die, but there will be a new life in the family. In other words, the sacrifice of Nick's life for the miracle that is growing in Julie's womb.

The movie owes a tremendous deal to the luminous presence of Miranda Otto, who does wonders with her depiction of Julie. Ms. Otto's face projects an intelligence that is uncanny. She makes us believe that she is this woman torn between the medicine that might help her young son, but does nothing, and to what extreme, as a mother, she will go to have Nick cured of the cancer that is killing him slowly.

Lothaire Bluteau is the healer, Alexei. He gives an enigmatic performance that adds another layer to the film. In their scenes together, Mr. Bluteau and Ms. Otto do amazing acting. This Canadian actor's work is never dull; he projects a rare knack to make his characters believable and likable.

Finally, William Fichtner, as Henry, is also excellent. He responds well to Ms. Holland's direction. The twins, played by Ryan Smith and Bianca Crudo are excellent without being bratty, or obnoxious.

Ms. Holland's film will reward those who watch it with an open mind as she never passes judgment on what we are seeing on the screen.

"Julie Walking Home" is about a woman coping with a rocky relationship with the father of her children, her son who has cancer and may or may not be healed by a faith healer, and her feelings for a man who believes he has mystical healing powers. Though the film's storyline is nothing new, the sheer reality of the drama, the wonderful performances Holland wrests from some relatively unknown actors, and Otto's tour-de-force makes this film eminently worthy. Not unlike "Behind the Red Door" (2002), "Hysterical Blindness" (2002), or "Unfaithful" (2002) this film is a "sleeper" which will be of greatest interest to the discerning drama enthusiast into film's about women in turmoil. (B+)

This is a drama about beliefs and how these can change based on necessity and fear.

At the beginning of the movie the Jew husband (the always excellent William Fichtner) doesn't believe in miracles, but after his son gets better from a "miracle man", he changes his mind and begs that same miracle man --who has also slept with his wife in the meantime-- to come and help his son. The necessity of his son win the battle with cancer is more important than his own prejudices and fears.

The movie starts a bit slowly, then it gets a bit of a more interesting pace, but overall it's not a movie that will have you see it again any time soon. Performances are good, photography is not too bad, but the pace is slow.