‘BEING Julia,” a sophisticated sex comedy starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons, will open this year’s Toronto International Film Festival with its world premiere on Sept. 9.

Bening plays a fortysomething stage actress in the film, which is set in London’s West End in 1938. Irons portrays her philandering, producer-Svengali husband.

Hungarian director Istvan Szabo (“Mephisto”) directs the script by Oscar winner Ronald Harwood (“The Pianist”), from a novel by W. Somerset Maugham.

“American Beauty,” also starring Bening, premiered in 1999 at the Toronto festival, North America’s largest.