POOL’S
Annette Bening a genuine Oscar
THERE’S a lovely scene in this bittersweet true story where Annette Bening’s former Hollywood star visits a pub in Liverpool.
“Isn’t that Gloria Grahame?” whispers the middle-aged barman respectfully as her young companion (Jamie Bell) gets the drinks in.
The year is 1981, smartphones haven’t been invented and former starlets are allowed to fade away with dignity.
Gloria may have won an
Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful, and starred in festive favourite It’s a Wonderful Life, but by her mid-50s she was just a fuzzy memory to those who witnessed the golden age of the silver screen.
She was eeking out a living in small British theatres and kicking her heels in a cheap London boarding house when aspiring Scouse actor Peter Turner (Bell) bumped into her in the corridor.
Turner, who was nearly 30 years her junior, had no idea who she was but was instantly besotted.
The irrepressible former bombshell isn’t going to go quietly. An affair quickly develops that takes us to New York and Los Angeles where he meets her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and her acid-tongued sister (Frances Barber) who is wearily familiar with four-times-married Gloria’s romantic escapades. Then, a few months after their affair has fizzled out, Peter gets a phone call – Gloria has collapsed on stage and wants to recover in Peter’s family home in Liverpool.
Director Paul McGuigan keeps things refreshingly simple, giving his actors room to develop their characters while allowing Turner’s 1987 memoir to tell the story. The film shuffles between two years, 1979 and 1981, showing us the whirlwind romance and the heart-breaking postscript where Gloria spends her final days in the Turners’ terraced house.
Bell makes a believable Peter, who is besotted but often exasperated by this exotic but completely impossible woman. The Teessider mostly nails the older, more sonorous version of the Liverpool accent too. Weirdly, he sounds more authentic than real-life Liverpudlian Stephen Graham who dons one of Harry Enfield’s Scouser wigs to play Peter’s angry brother.
Julie Walters and Kenneth Cranham (inset with Bell) also put in likeable turns as Peter’s parents who reluctantly but gently nurse Gloria through her final days. But this film belongs to Bening. Last year, I optimistically tipped her to win her first Oscar for a completely overlooked turn in 20th Century Women.
This year, she’s looks like a genuine contender with this warm, funny and deeply affecting performance. HE was one of Britain’s greatest-ever footballers, but Kenny Dalglish has always been a dreadful interviewee.
So it must have been quite a challenge getting the tight-lipped Glaswegian to open up for this featurelength documentary.
Director Stewart Sugg never manages to hit a defencesplitting ball, but he gives us some tantalising glimpses behind King Kenny’s throne.
As the film focuses on Dalglish’s Liverpool years, the ghosts of both Heysel and Hillsborough were always going to loom large.
But some viewers may be surprised to hear about Dalglish’s involvement in a third football tragedy. As well as being on the pitch when 39 died at Heysel in 1985, and in the dugout when 96 lost their lives at the Sheffield Wednesday ground in 1989, the childhood Rangers fan was in the crowd when 66 people were killed at Ibrox in 1971.
“There but for the grace of God go I,” he says, recalling the tragedy.
But Dalglish is still reluctant to talk about the horrors he witnessed.
In a remarkable scene, a journey to Sheffield is cut short when he gets out of the car on a country lane.
“I don’t want to go back, I don’t want those memories to come flooding back,” he says looking at the stadium in the