Review: Jessica Chastain and those "Eyes of Tammy Faye"
Saturday, September 18, 2021 at 3:00PM By Nathaniel R
A makeup artist fumbles, discovering she can't undo what Tammy Faye hath wrought. It's not a matter of removing the makeup and starting fresh as some of it is tattooed right on. The former televangelist's lips are permanently lined and the raccoon eyes are there to say; mascara as monument. Was this scene at the beginning or the end of the new biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye? One can never remember with framing devices that flashback to tell you the whole story that got us there but it hardly matters. The point that comes across is not so much how we got there -- though perhaps the filmmakers think go given the framing device-- but that Tammy Faye's clown makeup bioqueen persona is an absolute. She didn't will into it existence so much as uncover and reveal its eternal nature.
Is this laying it on too thick? The prose, I mean, not the mascara. Of course! But "too much" is just right for anything Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker related...