Could the timing be worse for a biopic about a 1950s’ Hollywood flame famous for seducing her teenage stepson right around the same time the lad’s father was allegedly putting the moves on a 16-year-old Natalie Wood? I’d say no, but not without adding no time is a good time for a movie as languid as “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.” Other than another haunting performance by Annette Bening as Oscar-winner Gloria Grahame – the vain, flirty screen vixen with the pouty lips and body for sin – the latest celebrity sob story from writer Matt Greenhalgh is a flick in search of a reason to exist. Based on a memoir by middling British actor Peter Turner, the focus is on the final two years of the Los Angeles-born actress’ life, when she entered into a tumultuous affair with the struggling Liverpudlian thespian. He was three decades her junior, but the affair she had with the 13-year-old son of her second husband, “Rebel without a Cause” director Nicholas Ray (Watch out, Natalie!), tells us she liked her men young, dumb and inexperienced.
Turner, played with an appealing mix of sexiness and humanity by Jamie Bell, fits that description to a tee. Yet the movie – like the book – insists on doing nothing beyond repeatedly patting Peter’s back for his unerring devotion to the cancer-stricken beauty who falls for the boy he was but is inspired by the man he becomes in her dying days. Why Greenhalgh, who previously profiled John Lennon in the vapid “Nowhere Boy” and doomed Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis in the excellent “Control,” found this opposites-attract couple interesting enough for a movie is perplexing. Director Paul McGuigan (“Lucky Number Slevin”) does what he can with the thin material, relying heavily on the talents of his two leads, but he never offers a substantial reason to invest in what can best be described as an oddball romance.
Their story begins in 1979, when the long washed-up Grahame is slumming in a Liverpool production of “Rain.” During the play’s run, she’s staying in the same rooming house as Turner, who instantly catches her fancy when she invites him into her flat to do the hustle (That’s a disco dance for you millennials). The next you know, they’ve advanced to doing the horizontal boogie. Then he brings Gloria home to meet his blue-collar Mum (Bell’s “Billy Elliot” co-star, Julie Walters, great) and Da (Kenneth Cranham). The star and the commoners instantly hit it off, and Grahame is soon eschewing class and thinking of them as her parents, too. What could go wrong? How about a cancer diagnosis? Yes, Gloria’s days are waning, and so is our patience for what becomes a relentlessly maudlin march toward death – all because she steadfastly refuses treatment out of fear of losing her hair. Lost upon the filmmakers is the movie’s strength, which is the sexy, rambunctious fun the couple enjoys in the days before the Grim Reaper starts hanging about. That stuff is engaging, a sort of low-rent “Notting Hill,” but when the doctors enter the picture, all the air goes out.
Bening remains valiant throughout, intuitively portraying the downward slide of a former sex kitten. The irony, of course, is that unlike the looks-obsessed Grahame, Bening doesn’t have a vain bone in her body. She attacks the role with a fury, unafraid to depict the ravages of age and cancer. She convincingly goes from bubbly to bedridden without missing a beat. And her chemistry with Bell is potent. But it’s even better with Walters, who exudes compassion as the star’s caretaker and surrogate mother when Grahame invites herself to the Turners’ Liverpool home to live out her final days.
Frustration rises when the script fails to match the level of spirited actors working their pants off in search of the film’s emotional core. You want to feel something for Gloria, especially early in their relationship when she invites Peter to her Malibu bungalow to meet her weird mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and surly sister, Joy (Frances Barber). But it never stirs your sentiments to the extent it should.
Part of it can be attributed to the decision to repeatedly toggle between Peter and Gloria’s beginnings in 1979 and her dying days in 1981. It robs the movie of momentum, causing the story to drag when it should be gliding. Yet, it has Bening, who elevates even the dullest flicks to a higher level. You might even say, to paraphrase another noted Liverpudlian, she takes a bad movie and makes it better.