Who Is Julia?

A very good TV movie. I watched it as a kit and I didn't even remember that Mare Winninhgam was the protagonist.

I was really touched by the notion that what we are is not our appearance, but our character, memories and thoughts (our brain). People often refer to the operation that took place in this film as a "brain transplant". That is not correct. The doctors did a BODY transplant to Julia! Since the "plain Jane" character dies in the first minutes of the film and Julia's body is nearly destroyed, the doctors transfered the brain (i.e. Julia) to the healthy body of plain Jane. That is, they gave a new body to Julia, not a new brain to plain Jane.

The second meaning of the film is that appearance CAN affect character, and thus the person. After Julia wakes up in a new body, she sees people reacting differently to her and thus starts to change herself also.

So, the title "Who is Julia", emphasizes both the fact that Julia is "now" the plain looking woman instead of the attractive one, AND the fact that she is not actually the same character after the body transplant.

So, who is Julia? None actually.

I loved this book. It's one of my favorites. I am normally disappointed with movie versions, but this one was done quite well. The actors that they chose did a very good job of bringing this story to the screen. Mare Winningham is an outstanding actress in every role that I have seen her in. She made her character's pain obvious without being overdone. I highly recommend this movie.

When a beautiful fashion model's body is crushed in a traffic accident, and a rather homely woman suffers a brain hemorrhage, doctors decide to transplant the brain of the model into the brain dead woman. Therein comes the dilemma of the former model, Julia, to discover whether it's the body or the mind that make a person who he or she is.

Rejected by her husband, Julia must thwart off the affections of the man once married to the woman, whose body she now inhabits, and convince his children that she is not their mother. Throughout her life, Julie held everyone's attention. Now, she must struggle for it. No longer beautiful, she must come to grips with whom she really is.

The plot foreshadows John Woo's Face Off with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta (though there is no telling if that is where he got the idea), where the faces and identities of two men, one good, one bad, are exchanged.

Ultimately, Julia learns that much of what she believed to be love was based upon how she looked, and not upon who she was inside. The viewer must, of course, give license to the fact that no one has ever successfully transplanted a brain (George Bush grants proof to that) and Julia might have experienced the same dilemma had she been scarred by fire or lost all of her limbs. This was just a less lurid way of putting forth the idea that sometimes love is an illusion; that marriages often fail, not because they grow cold, but because people grow old and the sexual attraction that was the basis of it is now gone.

This is not a great movie, in that it was made for television on a modest budget, but it gives one pause to consider how others might treat us if suddenly we became outwardly different in a not so pleasant way.

I thought "Who is Julia?" was a very powerful movie with excellent acting by Mare Winningham. She gave a wonderful performance. The rest of the cast was great too. It has aired most often on Lifetime Television.

Usually, I hate the movies that Lifetime airs. My parents watch them constantly, and they seem to all be the same. But this one struck me. I really enjoyed it. It was dramatic without being overly-dramatic. I think the characters were well-developed, and the actors did a stunning job, even if the dialogue was a little choppy here and there.

All in all, "Who is Julia?" was a really good movie, and I would recommend it to anyone.