Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Genre: Biopic, Drama
The Good
The Bad
A nice enough tribute to Grahame but a superficial experience with no real insight or revelation.
Gloria Grahame reportedly seduced her then-thirteen-year-old stepson and later married and had two children with him. This gets a passing mention in Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, and could have been the basis for a much more interesting and substantive movie. What we get instead is a chance for Annette Bening to turn in a fun and show-stealing late-career performance, and not much else. The movie focuses on just a few years at the end of Grahame’s life, when a cancer diagnosis sent the aging star to England to seek the comfort of a younger ex-lover (Jamie Bell) and his lower class family. We get flashbacks to their affair, some melodrama with hidden emotions and intentions, and a heightened and syrupy ending. Not a complete waste of a Sunday afternoon at the movies, but ultimately forgettable.
