The New York Film Festival has begun. Here's Nathaniel on the latest from David Cronenberg which won Julianne Moore the Best Actress prize at Cannes earlier this year.
Let's not bury the lede. At a key moment in Maps to the Stars when the actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) gets some bad news that she's more or less been expecting/dreading, she is in a Buddha pose in yoga pants. Her eyes struggle to hold back tears and her body struggles to pretend it's relaxing when she lets out a sudden wail. You think the wail will descend into Julianne Moore's familiar crying jag (You know how she loves to do). Instead the wail abruptly stops. Fans of Julianne Moore won't be able to silence their own screaming so quickly. I, for one, felt euphoric watching her. For those of us whom we have famously dubbed "actressexuals" - the word originated at this blog though it's now escaped our small pfeiff fiefdom and entered the greater internet -- major achievements from our favorite stars can feel, however absurdly, like personal triumphs. Or at least like just rewards for enduring loyalty. Especially if you've worried that the magic has dissipated with familiarity, poor career decisions, lesser roles and/or medicore films.
This year, with Maps to the Stars and Still Alice (previously reviewed), the Julianne Moore I first fell for, the actress who inspired my whole career path (newbies might not know that this site emerged from a zine I started in the 1990s with issue #1 dubbed "Julianne Moore is God," pictured left) came roaring back into full power.
Pity, then, that the movie can't quite keep up with her or harness her brilliant satirical embodiment of all that is self-absorbed, self-loathing, self-medicated, and self-serving in modern Hollywood celebrity. [More...]
It's not, I must quickly add, that the film is terrible. It's just that it's disjointed, uneven and unfocused, and weirdly bereft of the kind of offkilter disturbances it needs to work. Two ghosts figure into the narrative, for example, but their scenes never have the full rattling drama or maybe psychological horror or maybe deadpan comedy that they need. All three of those things are things Cronenberg could once capture with ease. Maps to the Stars, is written by Hollywood satirist Bruce Wagner (He wrote a similar book called Dead Stars but he says he based it on this unproduced at the time screenplay, so this is an Original Screenplay for what it's worth). And the disjointed feeling may well be unavoidable. It follows the fates of five main characters on mutually assured paths of self-destruction: Havana Segrand is a famous actress whose career is on the skids; Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) is her burn victim personal assistant or as Havana likes to call her "my chore whore"; and the three other key players are a showbiz power family led by a self-help guru Dr Stafford Weiss (John Cusack) his wife Christina (Olivia Williams) who manages their cash cow son Benjie (Evan Bird), a spoiled and hateful teenage movie star who commands $8 million a picture. On the periphery of the action are the aforementioned ghosts, a chauffeur/actor/writer (Robert Pattinson), several showbiz acquaintances of Havana's and Carrie Fisher (Carrie Fisher), brilliantly cast and perfectly parcelled out as Connective Tissue within Hollywood's vast incestuous family of neurotics.
But for all of the screenplay's verve, it may be repetitive and easy but it's not dull, visually not much appears to be happening at least on a first screening. The auteur's gift for judging how sound can rattle a scene's surface mood comes through, though. Cronenberg's best films rely heavily on his inimitable directorial voice paired with brave actors totally going for it. But, sadly, Moore is the only one who seems to have fully showed up to work. (Points to Mia Wasikowska, a little lost at times but at least in the same zip code as Moore)
Moore manages a highwire juggling act of easy-target satire, traumatized neurotic truth, and complete insanity that is, I'd argue, the only trifurcated tone by which this absurd story and ballsy if simplistic satire could be its best self. The other actors only manage those registers briefly and never all three and certainly not all at the same time like our ginger goddess (who is gone to blonde seed here, like an adult Lindsay Lohan had she managed to keep it together until her late 40s). Everything about her star turn works, from her faux sincerity, to her babbling dimwittedness, the subtle but constant shade thrown at other actresses (she's a Hathahater!) to her career insecurity, to the hilarious physical business (one moment with a Genie statue -- a Genie statue !!! - just slays), and the way she holds her overly glossed lips in perpetual pout like she's definitely had whatever procedures Catherine O'Hara had at the tail end of For Your Consideration. True to glorious (return to) form, when it comes to actresses playing actresses (see also: Boogie Nights and Vanya on 42nd Street), Julianne Moore is a supreme being.
Julianne: Easy A; The Movie: C+