National Post (National Edition)
‘A TWICE-OVER TIME-TRAVEL UTOPIA’
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
There’s a lovely little subgenre, often British, in which a regular Johnny has a brush with A-list fame. Think of Eddie Redmayne and Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn; Zac Efron meeting (Britishborn) Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles; or, in the realm of pure fiction, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.
The latest, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, is based on the book by British actor Peter Turner, and on the life of American film star Gloria Grahame, who died in 1981 – in New York, to be clear. You may remember her as the flirtatious Violet in 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life (“I only wear this when I don’t care how I look,” she says of a clingy, traffic-stopping dress) or from an Oscar-winning supporting role a few years later in The Bad and the Beautiful.
She’s played here by Annette Bening, who is not only the right age, but also modelled her own Oscarnominated performance in 1990’s The Grifters after Grahame’s turn in The Big Heat. Here she nails the part of a flighty, impetuous, tempestuous, needy showbiz type. And selfcentred? “I love those things,” she breathes when someone mentions a one-act play. Why? “You get to say all the lines.”
The action cuts between London’s posh Primrose Hill neighbourhood in 1979, and Liverpool two years later. The common thread is Peter (Jamie Bell), Gloria’s 30-years-younger lover. The early days see them falling in love and moving to America, which is presented in the glossy, soft-focus sheen of a dream. The later years (it feels like many years later) finds Gloria ill, and landing on Peter’s doorstep, where his salt-of-the-Earth family (Julie Waters, Kenneth Cranham and Stephen Graham, straight out of a Mike Leigh film) is more than happy to lend a hand.
The mystery of the months in between – how did they break up? – forms the dramatic spine of the film. It’s a rather weak spine, to be sure; more fantasy than collywobbles, as we watch Gloria and Peter out on the town or watching one of her old movies, made about the same time he was born. (A wise choice by director Paul McGuigan was to leave the original Grahame untouched in the archival footage and let audiences fill in the gaps.)
But there’s tension and even potential scandal in the oddball, May-September romance, which comes to a head when the couple go off to meet Gloria’s mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and sister (Frances Barber). Both women beg him, one gently, the other roughly, not to become her fifth husband, especially since her fourth was her former stepson and son of her second. (Ask Woody Allen if you need help with the math.)
But there’s little that feels unseemly about the film, whose wishfulfillment vibe is strengthened by the drab-chic look of 1980s Britain, and some breezy musical choices; kudos for including California Dreamin’ not in the familiar cut by The Mamas & the Papas, but the slow and trippy version from José Feliciano.
Between footage of Grahame in her heyday, and Turner (now 66 and with a brief cameo) in his youth, this is a twice-over time-travel utopia.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool opens Jan. 26 in Toronto, and Feb. 9 in Montreal, with other cities to follow.