Thursday, November 30, 2017

film stars don’t die in liverpool…

I went along to the Watershed this afternoon to see Paul McGuigan’s “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”. I didn’t have any real expectations of seeing a particularly good film… just that one or two friends/family members had mentioned that they’d heard ‘good reports’.
Well, I was wrong... I thought it was an absolutely lovely film.
Essentially, it’s a you-couldn’t-make-it-up true romance set in Los Angeles, New York, London and Liverpool in the late 1970s and early 80s and based on Peter Turner’s own memoir. It’s a remarkable, sweet, sad love story starring Annette Bening (as legendary Hollywood star Gloria Grahame) and Jamie Bell (as Turner).

As an unknown, struggling young actor in the late 70s, Turner met and fell in love with Grahame who, incredibly, was living in the same north London boarding house. With her Hollywood career seemingly behind her, she was looking for stage work in Britain and suppressing worries about her health. Despite their age difference (Turner was 28 years younger than Grahame – in fact, half her age), the pair had an on-off affair. Sometime after their fling ended, Turner received a phonecall to say that Grahame had collapsed in her dressing room while on tour in the UK, and had asked to come and stay with Peter and his family in Liverpool, convinced that she could recover there.
It would be unfair to go into further detail, so I’ll just say that it’s a tremendously warm and tender love story. I may be a soft/easy touch as far as these things are concerned, but it ticked an awful lot of boxes as far as I was concerned – pathos, humour, passion and exceptional acting. Both Bening and Bell were simply brilliant (and I really mean that!) – Oscars for each of them perhaps?
The soundtrack of music from that era also works perfectly – together with an apt new song (given recent Hollywood revelations/accusations?) by Elvis Costello entitled “You Shouldn’t Look at Me That Way”.
All in all, one of the very best films I’ve seen this year.
You DEFINITELY need to see it!

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