Jessica Chastain Says ‘Miss Julie’s’ 1890s Gender Relations Are as Current as the Nude Photo Scandal

Liv Ullman’s film version of the August Strindberg play “Miss Julie” may be set in the 1890s, but the beautifully dark and emotionally terrifying film is filled with sentiments that sound strangely and scarily modern, including echoes of the recent theft of celebrities’ nude photos from their cellphones and iCloud accounts, as star Jessica Chastain said at the Toronto International Film Festival.

At one point in the film, Chastain’s title character, an emotionally unstable noblewoman, has sex with John, a servant played by Colin Farrell. The encounter is presented in a way that blurs the lines between consent and assault — and afterwards, Farrell’s character tells Miss Julie, “I may be partly to blame, but do you think a man in my position would even dare to look at you if you hadn’t asked for it?”

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When TheWrap pointed out that those lines sound like the kind of sentiments we hear today, both Chastain and Ullman eagerly agreed.