Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool **** (2017, Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Kenneth Cranham, Stephen Graham, Vanessa Redgrave, Frances Barber) – Movie Review

In 1981, British actor Peter Turner got a dramatic phone call that his former lover, the Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame, had collapsed in a Lancaster hotel and was refusing hospital care.

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is his real-life story of what happened after he quickly and readily agreed to take her into his eccentric family’s chaotic home in Liverpool. And, in flashbacks, it is his real-life story of what happened before – their love story of young man and much older, previously famous woman. It is a moving but desperately sad story. It is very romantic, very emotional too, a kind of Romeo and Juliet doomed, star-crossed love story. And, neatly, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is going to play a key theme in the film.

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is very well handled by director Paul McGuigan, with some interesting stagey devices that work well with the subject back projection, obvious sets, the hero wandering down the studio into his own past etc. The screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh based on the memoir by Peter Turner is ideal, sharp, literate, moving and fast-moving.

But it is the performances that make it. Jamie Bell and Annette Bening are superb. Giving charismatic turns, both actors are on their best form, and, hopefully, potential award winners. Ideally cast as Grahame, Bening is a treasure as she showed recently, in 2016, in 20th Century Women and Rules Don’t Apply. She inhabits the tragic Grahame, and even the clips and pictures of the Fifties star’s real self can’t detract from that idea. Bell is as good as he has been in anything in the 17 years since Billy Elliot (2000).

Talking of which, it reunites Bell with Julie Walters, his co-star in Billy Elliot. Ms Walters (funny, as usual) and Kenneth Cranham are excellent as Peter’s solid, caring mum and dad. It is a slight shame that Stephen Graham, Vanessa Redgrave and Frances Barber are only okay as Peter’s brother, Gloria’s mom, and Gloria’s toxic sister.

It’s not their fault at all. The problem for these actors is their roles are weakly written and don’t have enough screen time to make proper impact. The movie is only really interested in Peter Turner and Gloria Grahame. But that is enough, way enough, with these two tour-de-force performances.

Bell gets to disco dance, by the way, John Travolta style. It’s nice to see. And Bening can strut her stuff too.

Peter Turner has a role as Jack. It’s his first film since The Krays in 1990, when he played the Regal Manager. In the year the love story starts, 1979, he played Trinculo in Derek Jarman’s The Tempest.

Commendably, it is produced by 007 boss Barbara Broccoli for Eon Productions, showing small can be beautiful. It is only the second non-Bond movie produced by Eon, following Call Me Bwana (1963).

Annette Bening has four Oscar nominations so far: The Grifters (1990), American Beauty (1999), Being Julia (2004) and The Kids Are All Right (2010).

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is nominated for three BAFTA Film Awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress. Bell is nominated for the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor. Bening is nominated for Actress of the Year in the London Critics Circle Film Awards 2018.

Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame.

Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame won her Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Sweetly, we are shown the clip of her receiving the statuette from Edmund Gwenn, with Bob Hope as MC. She was also nominated for Crossfire (1947), and is fondly remembered for In a Lonely Place and The Big Heat, and as Anytime Annie in Oklahoma!

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Gloria Grahame is fondly remembered for In a Lonely Place.

Peter Turner and Jamie Bell.