Maps To The Stars
Director: David Cronenburg
Starring: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson
111 mins; Class 18;
KRS Releasing Ltd

David Cronenberg is a director whose eclectic CV includes Scanners (1981), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), A History of Violence (2005) and A Dangerous Method (2011).

He has, for decades, challenged moviegoers and critics with his vivid stories, powerful characters and magnificent visuals.

With its vicious insight into life in Hollywood, Maps to the Stars is typically Cronenberg and features his trademarks of accurately-drawn characters and his unusual brand of horror in a morality play that unfolds against the backdrop of sun-infused Los Angeles.

For Cronenberg’s target, this time is the Hollywood elite, seen through the eyes of screenwriter Bruce Wagner. Wagner’s script is an indictment of the celebrity way of life, its moral decadence and the dysfunction it causes. Among the protagonists is Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), who struggles with her addictions and the ghost of her mother, classic Hollywood star Clarice Taggart who died in a fire years before.

Also in the mix is the Weiss family – Stafford, a self-help guru (John Cusack), his controlling wife Christina (Olivia Williams) and their teen star son Benjie (Evan Bird), whose career Christina is trying to revive after he spent a stint in rehab.

The narrative is a little uneven

Into their lives stumble Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), a mysterious young woman who arrives in Hollywood in search of a job, and limo driver – with ambitions to write and act – Jerome Fontana (Robert Pattison).

Maps to the Stars presents a very dark look at Hollywood’s underbelly and what really goes on under La La Land’s perpetual sunshine and its million-dollar houses decorated with frightfully expensive furniture in which live dysfunctional families, washed-out stars, self-aggrandising therapists, stage moms, spoiled, drug-addled teens and so on.

The story is intent on presenting as grotesque a series of characters as possible to perpetuate the myth that Hollywood spawns monsters, and rather than serve any dramatic or indeed humorous purpose whatsoever, and they are simply ciphers, objects to observe and study rather than feel anything for, the excellence of the actors notwithstanding, especially Moore and Wasikowska.

For if there is any reason to watch Maps to the Stars, it’s for the ensemble cast, led by Moore – who deservedly won the Best Actress Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Wasikowska, who has come a tremendously long way since 2010’s Alice in Wonderland projects equal amounts of humour, sympathy and menace as Agatha the mysterious woman with a very dark past. Williams’ role is small yet she encompasses all that is awful about Hollywood parents; while virtual newcomer Evan Bird hits all the right notes as the truly obnoxious Hollywood brat, a Justin Bieber-like character you’d like to slap very, very hard.

It is not the first film to satirise Hollywood, but Maps to the Stars’ narrative is a little uneven, the humour ,while quite biting, is a little hit-and-miss and the message Cronenberg is trying to convey is delivered with the subtlety with which one of his protagonists whacks another on the head with an award… thus diluting the impact of what should be a darkly comic tale.

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