Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017) * * *

Directed by:  Paul McGuigan

Starring:  Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Stephen Graham, Vanessa Redgrave, Kenneth Cranham

The problem with dating an actress like Gloria Grahame is you don't know when the performance ends and the real Gloria begins.     Maybe that is the case with dating actors in general, but surely the more famous ones present trickier emotional dilemmas.     Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool is about such a relationship.    Peter Turner (Bell) is a struggling Liverpool actor about thirty years younger than the fading Gloria Grahame (Bening), who languishes in starring roles in Liverpool plays circa 1979.    She goes where the work is and actors must act, but it seems a long way to fall for the blonde actress who in her prime co-starred with Jimmy Stewart and Humphrey Bogart on her way to winning the 1952 Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Gloria continues to maintain an air of the femme fatales she used to play which hides her insecurity about her age and career options.     This is both captivating and frustrating to Peter, who loves the idea of dating a movie star, even a fading one, but has to navigate some muddier waters as Gloria's health deteriorates and the realities of their age and career trajectories rear their ugly heads.     Gloria and Peter are opposites, but they make a convincing couple, thanks to the sweet, rich performances by Bening and Bell.    Gloria attempts in vain to portray the blonde bombshell she played in so many movies in the 1940s and 50s.    As the film opens, she is preparing for another Liverpool play when she collapses from stomach pains.     She chalks it up to gas, but we all know better, especially since she is rarely seen without a cigarette.     Ego and vanity would not allow her to recognize the gravity of her condition, which is touching and tragic all at once.

Peter is a local actor whose career doesn't seem to be going anywhere.    In his late 20s now, he does not look to rise above performing in local plays for the duration of his career.     In the spring of his relationship with Gloria, he can't believe his good fortune to be dating Gloria, but dating Gloria comes with a lot of Gloria baggage.     She is a four-time divorcee, including a scandalous marriage to her stepson, the son of her second husband, which may have something to do with why she is acting in Liverpool and not New York or Hollywood.    Her envious mother and sister gleefully point out these flaws upon meeting Peter in California.

Gloria tries to maintain the façade of being a movie star, but she knows she is all but forgotten by the movie business which chewed her up and spit her out.     Now, she is frightened, insecure, and sick.   Peter is her rock, but soon Peter learns being a rock is too much to bear when Gloria won't tell him her cancer has returned.     She prefers to allow Peter to believe she is having an affair than tell him the truth, which leads to their estrangement.    She and Peter reconcile after she falls ill, and Peter has her stay with his working class Liverpool family which treats Gloria like one of their own.  

Peter's family are caring and loving, especially Peter's mother Bella (Walters), who plans to cancel her long-awaited trip to Australia to care for the ailing Gloria.     They all know what is happening, even if Gloria tries to downplay it, and are genuinely concerned with Gloria's physical well-being and Peter's emotional stability.    They don't see Gloria as a movie star, but as a member of their family.  

The film maintains a gentle tone, with McGuigan installing his trademark style of flashback in which we see the same scene from different points of view in order to see the full picture.     What appears to be cold behavior by Gloria is later seen to be something else entirely.    McGuigan employed this tactic in Wicker Park (2004) and Lucky Number Slevin (2006), both of which were effective romantic noir films.    When Peter weeps at the end as Gloria leaves him for the final time, the emotion is earned because Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool isn't just a May-December romance, but it is about people we care for.