Movie Review Movie Stars Dont Die in Liverpool

Gloria Grahame is not much remembered these days. She was never equally famous a movie star as, say, Marilyn Monroe. Just, with her soft, girlish vocalism, sensual mouth, and trademark pout belying the gutsiness of the characters she played, she was a staple player in 1950s film noir, who is still much beloved by fans of the genre.

Just it's Gloria Grahame in her later years, at the cease of her career, who's the centerpiece of Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool . Based on a memoir written by Peter Turner, it'southward the story of how Turner, an aspiring young actor trying to break into showbiz, met and fell in love with the veteran actress when she was working in England in 1979. The book is now a movie by managing director Paul McGuigan, a wistful tone poem about age and celebrity featuring dynamic performances from stars Annette Bening and Jamie Bell.

Scripted by Matt Greenhalgh, the film begins with a prologue in Liverpool, 1981, where Gloria (Bening) is appearing in a local theater production. When she collapses backstage, Peter (Bell) is called to come collect her, and takes her back abode to his mum (Julie Walters). Flashback two years to Peter'south first glimpse of Gloria, at a neighborhood lodging house where they take adjoining rooms, running through her song exercises in forepart of a mirror. She invites him in for a drink if he'll teach her to disco dance, and a friendship is born.

Peter is 28, and Gloria is near 30 years his senior. Merely they bond over the arts and crafts and business of acting as he squires her around boondocks, and pretty before long they become lovers. When, inevitably, she moves back to Los Angeles, she invites Peter to come live with her in her trailer on the beach at Malibu—a heady fantasy for a lad from Liverpool. He meets Gloria's doting mother (yep, that's Vanessa Redgrave, in a ane-scene cameo), and waspish sister (Frances Barber).

The film moves fluidly between parallel time frames (a graphic symbol turns a corner in one period and finds himself in the other), telling the story of how their relationship collapses, only to be reinvented later. The rift that separates them in Fifty.A. is told twice, first from Peter'due south viewpoint, and then Gloria'southward. This works the beginning fourth dimension, although when a second, follow-up scene is as well repeated, it becomes a little irritating (and the swelling, bombastic music doesn't help).

However, that Bening's no-nonsense, often fiercely anti-glam onscreen persona is then different from the childish Grahame's gives the casting its interesting edge. Bening softens her vox a bit to approximate Grahame's delivery, simply doesn't mimic the other actress. Instead, she digs into the heart of a adult female of a sure age whose appetite for life and the piece of work she loves is undiminished, investing her with a vitality and playfulness that plausibly beguiles the younger human. Her love for showbiz is infectious; at the movies, Bening'southward Gloria can't comprise her gleeful laughter at the chutzpah of the chest-bursting scene in Alien while everyone else—including Peter—screams and cowers.

There's some other nifty moment when Gloria tells Peter the best acting advice she ever got, from Humphrey Bogart. "Continue information technology all inside," she says. "Let the camera come to y'all." Clearly, Bell has taken this advice to heart. Many of the movie'due south richest moments come from Bell's however face, perceptibly filling with emotion to which he never quite gives voice. Solid and soulful, he partners Bening beautifully.

Of grade, based on Turner'southward book, we take but his word that Peter was equally gallant and adoring as Bell plays him. (When Gloria and Peter spat in the moving-picture show, it's almost always because he tries to brand some light hearted joke that she takes too seriously.) Yet, there are moments of emotional truth, especially a fundamental scene when Peter finds a way, withal briefly, for Gloria to realize her dream of playing Juliet onstage. And if this movie revives interest in Gloria Grahame's vintage movies, I'm all for it.

Moving-picture show STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL

*** (out of 4)

With Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, and Julie Walters. Written by Matt Greenhalgh. From the volume by Peter Turner. Directed by Paul McGuigan. A Sony Classics release. Rated R. 105 minutes.

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