That life doesn’t always offer the opportunity to neatly right past wrongs is a promising theme for a drama. Too bad, then, that Julia squanders it.    

The central character is Lou, a clearly ill man in his seventies who wanders into a rundown coffee shop. It’s soon revealed that he’s returned to his hometown to make amends to Julia, the girl he loved decades earlier and never saw again after he served in the Korean War. Her son refuses to have him upset his mother, now suffering from dementia in a nursing home. But when Lou literally gets on his knees and begs, he relents.

It’s here that the evening turns anti-climactic. A flashback to the fateful encounter between the younger Lou and Julia reveals immature anger but hardly the sort of behavior that would haunt someone for the rest of his life.

And when Lou is finally reunited with his former flame who doesn’t recognize him, the most dramatic moment centers around the pair eating snack cakes.

The acting, however, couldn’t be better. Richard Fancy, a familiar face from stage and screen (Being John Malkovich, Seinfeld), is deeply affecting as Lou, and Roses Prichard beautifully captures the confused daze of an Alzheimer’s sufferer.

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