Lillian Hellman wrote some great, nuanced plays in her life, so it's odd her own life story is written so flatly and unevenly. While the acting is good, there is no arc or drama in the whole movie. (Spoiler) The introduction and original title of the memoir hints at that there is a chance she will "repent" and change her mind, betraying her friend or something like that...but we know she won't, or else there is no movie (it's one of those films where you know exactly how every character will play out in the first five minutes). That would have made a more interesting film, but Julia is essentially a spy-caper with a Dashiell Hammett cameo. Instead the movie builds to a dramatic point where the protagonist stumbles into an anti-climactic money-smuggling ring on a train. And the then her friend dies and never tells where her baby is.
We don't even know whether there is a baby at all or if that was just a ploy to smuggle one more kid out of Nazi Germany (which would have made a more interesting plot point: a dogmatic woman disavowing her past and social conventions, manipulating and duping her weaker friend in emotional blackmail, adopting a needy orphan) but that's clearly not how it was intended to be interpreted. It's so po-faced and morally pristine the only characters I really enjoyed were the two scumbag incestuous aristocrats played by John Glover and Meryl Streep.
We don't even know whether there is a baby at all or if that was just a ploy to smuggle one more kid out of Nazi Germany (which would have made a more interesting plot point: a dogmatic woman disavowing her past and social conventions, manipulating and duping her weaker friend in emotional blackmail, adopting a needy orphan) but that's clearly not how it was intended to be interpreted. It's so po-faced and morally pristine the only characters I really enjoyed were the two scumbag incestuous aristocrats played by John Glover and Meryl Streep.