Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: THE JULIA SET [Toronto International Film Festival - Toronto, Ontario]
After making her debut with “One Battle After Another, a follow up for Chase InfinitI could have gone a couple different ways. She smartly picks “The Julia Set” [Special Presentations] about a young woman gifted in mathematics given the access to study with great minds and jump up but still stuck in both the bureaucratic and sexiest structure of higher learning. Christopher Briny known from Amazon’s "The Summer I Turned Pretty" plays her TA and eventual paramour Pascal. He comes from a line of mathematicians including his overbearing but brilliant father played by Jason Isaacs (who at first looked like a grizzled Jon Hamm). Isaacs can definitely pour on the manipulation and disdain when needed. A specific scene at a dinner table and then with chess shows the tension he creates. Gillian Anderson plays the brilliant wife/mom pushed to the side but who also has the most triggering plot crux which makes all the difference. Infiniti’s Julia is focused but has her wants and desires too and the story shows that those can be subjugated as well.
Writer/Director Niki Byrne shows Pascal’s inferior character which got more than a few groans from the audience. However his character does a real jagged shift in the film on Julia but interestingly enough many of her friends and mother encourage her in the beginning to support him despite this because she has been so focused on her studying and not enjoying life. Even her teacher in Nina Hoss (so interesting in "TAR") will not give her the benefit of the doubt because she is blinded by how things should be (or are) in her estimation. An interesting discussion in an office towards the end shows that canton of dissonance. Infiniti plays Julia with a sense of determination but also of earnestness that shows she is torn but that sometimes it is only another person that can help you see outside your bubble. It is just interesting though expected to see who that person is. Harking back to the chess game Isaacs speaks about knowing why a move is played, not just its actual action. But the aspect of academia is also dictated by a certain ego. Even Julia, with a less gifted student, is able to see through a simpler game of GO that things aren’t always what they seem and that there are always possibilities for different moves. “The Julia Set” shows that in academic and collegiate society, classicism and human behavior still figures heavily but even in mathematics, there are certain means to an end. 82%/B/B-
By Tim Wassberg
