Movie Review: Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool (2017)

A biographical drama, Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool recounts the incongruous final days of Academy Award winning actress Gloria Grahame, far from the limelight.

The setting is England in 1981. In nondescript Lancaster, Grahame (Annette Bening) collapses in her dressing room ahead of a stage performance of The Glass Menagerie. She reconnects with her much younger former lover Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a stage actor, and relocates to his modest family home in Liverpool to rest and recover.

Peter still lives with his parents Bella (Julia Walters) and Joe (Kenneth Cranham). As they collectively care for their unexpected guest Peter recollects in flashback his torrid love affair with Grahame. They met in 1979, quickly fell in love despite the age difference, and Grahame introduced him to her life in Los Angeles and New York, including her mother (Vanessa Redgrave). They briefly moved in together but tensions arose almost immediately. Back in the present Gloria insists she will get better on her own, but her health appears to be in serious decline.

Based on the book by Turner and directed by Paul McGuigan, Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool is a literal example of life ending with a whimper rather than a bang. With her stardom days well behind her Grahame sees out her final hours in a cold spare bedroom in a wet and grey Liverpool, refusing to acknowledge the severity of her illness.

While her presence causes some drama among the Turner family members, McGuigan and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh are aware not much narrative momentum can be squeezed out of a woman confined to a bedroom. So a good half of the film recounts the origins and evolution of the love affair between Grahame and Turner.

The romance elements are only modestly engaging. Grahame had already worked her way through four husbands (including to her stepson) by the time she met Turner, and the film confirms both her ability to merge staged performance with life as needed, and her struggle to differentiate real and manufactured emotions. The relationship is therefore his infatuation meeting her desire to remain young, and McGuigan does not offer other grounding commonalities. Not surprisingly, their connection is as easy to disrupt as it was to ignite.

Bening's performance is considered and mostly disciplined in finding the lingering swagger of an actress who was among Hollywood's most celebrated stars a quarter of a century prior. Jamie Bell functions within a narrow range, while Julia Waters easily finds the warmth of a housewife welcoming a relative stranger into her house despite her own worries. Vanessa Redgrave gets the one scene as Gloria's mother.

Most of the movie takes place indoors. McGuigan conveys a dreary early 1980s Liverpool aesthetic, while the scenes in Los Angeles and New York are artificial and studio-bound. Other elements hint at sloppiness or production limitations: a despondent Peter spends a night away from the mounting tensions at home, and seeks solace with an Eileen (Leanne Best) who remains contextually undefined.

Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool does not overreach its limited source material, and settles into an obvious if still sometimes poignant posture.

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Movie Review: Billy Elliot (2000)

A drama and comedy about chasing dreams amidst economic hardship, Billy Elliot sparkles with good intentions and a mischievous glint in the eye.

It's 1984, and England is in the grips of a raucous miners' strike. In the small mining town of Everington in County Durham, eleven year old Billy Elliot (Jamie Bell) witnesses the struggle of his out-of-work father Jackie (Gary Lewis) and older brother Tony (Jamie Draven) as they join the daily picket line protests against replacement "scab" workers. Billy's mother is dead, and the family live in a cramped house with grandma (Jean Heywood) in a working class neighbourhood.

Billy loves to dance, and instead of boxing lessons he starts to sneak into the ballet class run by the seemingly jaded Sandra Wilkinson (Julie Walters). She spots potential in his enthusiasm, and encourages him to attend a Royal Ballet School audition in Newcastle. But when Jackie discovers what his son is up to, he demands that the ballet lessons stop, forcing Billy to either obey his father or pursue his burgeoning passion.

The film that spawned the hit musical, Billy Elliot is a grounded story of hope flickering within the ashes of a community's despair. Touching on themes of old-fashioned masculinity equating men dancing ballet with homosexuality, the inter-generational divide, and nondescript towns making the difficult transition from resource extraction to a more diverse future, writer Lee Hall charts a tender coming-of-age story.

Just as the adolescent Billy is a product of his environment, the film takes deep breaths from its stark and unscrubbed mining community. Director Stephen Daldry makes the bold decision to keep the language rough and real throughout, coarse words used in every sentence by everyone all the time, including the children and women.

Equally pragmatic is Billy's dancing ability. This is a boy with a natural willingness to dance and interest in learning; he is not anywhere near a prodigy or even naturally talented. As Ms. Wilkinson advises, the Royal Ballet School auditions are in search of attitude; they can teach the rest. As such, the few dance scenes feature Jamie Bell throwing himself into dance moves more with determined resiliency than fluidity, adding to the prevailing sense of authenticity.

If the first half of the film is about the discovery of dance and confronting hardened expectations, the second half is more about fatherhood. Dad Jackie steps out of the background and into the parental role, tapping the depth of love, support and willingness to sacrifice lurking within seemingly rough and ready families just below the surface layer of grimy coal dust.

The miners' strike serves as a backdrop without intruding too far into the main story. The hardship of unemployed men is worsened as some surrender and return to work, fracturing the fraternity. In some respects Billy's discovery of dance and subsequent disobedience of his dad could not come at a worse time, but elsewhere other boys are also coming out of their shell, including best friend Michael.

As it turns out, in an environment where there is nothing left to lose, both the men and their sons discover new and commendable reservoirs of fortitude.

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The Movies Of Julie Walters

All movies starring Julie Walters and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Billy Elliot (2000)

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Brooklyn (2015)

Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool (2017)

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: Brooklyn (2015)

A coming of age cross-continental romance, Brooklyn is a small film with a large scope. The story of a young Irish immigrant woman creating a new life in the United States is filled with overtones of the future clashing with the past, the new world contrasting with the old, and how one individual story carves out a new nation.

It's the early 1950s in the Irish village of Enniscorthy. Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a young woman with few economic prospects, has made the decision to immigrate to the US and settle in Brooklyn, with arrangements made by the kindly Father Flood (Jim Broadbent). Eilis leaves behind her mother (Jane Brennan) and sister Rose (Fiona Glascott), as well as her suffocating job at the local store run by the intolerable Miss Kelly (Bríd Brennan).

Eilis has to endure a bout of sea sickness in the trip across the Atlantic, and even after she settles into a rooming house run by Madge Kehoe (Julie Walters) and a job as a department store salesperson, she still suffers through a period of severe home sickness. Father Flood enrolls Eilis in bookkeeping night classes, and her prospects take another turn for the better when she meets handsome plumber Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen), and they gradually start a romance. Eilis starts to feel settled into her new life, but Ireland comes calling again, and she will find herself torn between her country of origin and her chosen a new life.

An Irish - British - Canadian co-production directed by John Cowley and based on Colm Tóibín's novel, Brooklyn is a deceptively simple film. Through the story of one woman taking the courageous step to alter the trajectory of her life, Crowley and screenwriter Nick Hornby explore the universal dilemma of immigrants though the ages, the promise of economic opportunity competing with nostalgia in an eternal struggle to define home. The film is smart, funny and poignant, combining romance with heartache and societal tensions as Eilis grows from girl to woman and has to define her future.

Brooklyn unfolds in the welcome absence of any histrionics. Crowley maintains a steady emotional tone of self-reflection and exploration well within the range of normal life. Whether Eilis is achingly home sick or giddily falling in love, her behaviour is always within the familiar reach of a typical young woman tackling the challenge of growing up in a new world. The humour is subdued, and emerges mostly around Madge Kehoe's dinner table where Eilis engages with her cohorts, other Irish young women with distinctive personalities but similar challenges.

During their courtship Tony labels Eilis as "amenable" (she helps him find the right word), and she is presented as a quiet, thoughtful and self-aware woman who is nevertheless open to what life has to offer. In the film's final third Eilis journeys back to Enniscorthy, and keeps a secret that is essential to the story's structure of weighing the familiar against the contemporary. While somewhat in keeping with Eilis' character, her behaviour back in Ireland does stretch the bounds of expectation, although it serves the metaphorical objective of highlighting nostalgia's enormous power.

Brooklyn looks magnificent, the title borough recreated as a bustling 1950s immigrant haven, and small town Ireland hiding both charm and the social perils bought upon by insularity.

Saoirse Ronan, all of 21 years old, owns the film as Eilis, and creates a contemplative and still evolving main character. Ronan allows Eilis to grapple with tugs of the heart and the vulnerabilities of a young mind torn in different directions, and often acts most effectively with silent pauses and lingering looks, revealing Eilis' pragmatism to never be far from the surface.

Inspired by the powers that shape journeys across oceans, Brooklyn is a rare film that remains intimate, wistful and personal, while carrying the echoes of a universal story about falling in love with people and places new and old.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.