Backstage

This 2005 film was surprisingly good, thanks to very deft and often subtle direction by Emmanuelle Bercot, who co-authored the script. She establishes an intense mood, a dark song of love, that nevertheless remains rooted in ordinary reality, despite occasional histrionics by one or another of its leads. A superb supporting cast (including Noemie Lvovsky) provides human touches and Emmanuelle Seigner, as the adored diva, and Isild Le Besco as the smitten fan, approach one another with a mix of curiosity, fear, and affection. This theme has been done before, notably in Tom DiCillo's sentimental and funny "Delirious," but "Backstage" has a European air, like Chopin's "Tristesse" Etude. Bercot is careful not to let it go over the brink, keeping the mood disciplined and the story within the boundaries of reality, despite the younger woman's often neurotic behavior. A relationship movie that is intriguing.

Fans obsess over stars, yes, but when a celebrity is lonely, isolated, and needs someone in their life they can connect to, and control ... even a crazy fan may have some something to offer. Such is the premise of Backstage. As with many foreign movies its not just the plot, or the relationships, but the texture and feel of the world the characters inhabit that forms the "meat" of the film. And its a sad, manipulative, emotionally-starved world these people inhabit. Never having been a celebrity, nor a member of an "entourage", still I sense this movie "gets it right" as it tracks the characters efforts to find love and happiness in their dysfunctional, stifling unnatural world. Amazing performances from all cast members. Well worth a watch.

Emmanuelle Bercot - popular in France, little-known in the U.S. - may make a name for herself with "Backstage," opening today [1/5] at the Embarcadero Cinemas.

In this film she directed last year, a teenage groupie's fantasy comes true, turns into a nightmare, then resolved with a bizarre and chilling double-cross, in relentless action that often borders on melodrama.

If Bercot did nothing else except cast Isild Le Besco to play Lucie, the true believer in Lauren, a Blondie/Céline-like pop star (Emmanuelle Seigner), she would deserve much credit. Lucie is totally obsessed with Lauren - her room a shrine to the singer, every word of her songs memorized and internalized - and Le Besco makes the character scarily believable.

A veteran of 32 movies, the 24-year-old actress has the face and temperament of a chameleon, she is far from "Hollywood-pretty," but has a mesmerizing presence. It's high time American audiences get to see her. Le Besco's "strangeness, raw presence, combining a child's gentleness with the disturbing qualities of madness" (in Bercot's words) make an indelible impression.

Fan and star cross paths, and the monstrous diva brings the often catatonic idolater into her dysfunctional, chaotic life. All the power is on one side in this relationship, and yet - shades of "All About Eve"! - Lucie gets her way unexpectedly at times. A large, capable cast rounds out what is essentially a duet for the two women.

Without lecturing or preaching, Bercot unmasks ugly aspects of celebrity worship. Her script for the film ranges from pedestrian to insightful. As so many movies today, "Backstage" suffers from the lack of a decisive editor, overstaying its welcome by running almost two hours. It may remain unrated, but the realistic/intimate depiction of the pop star's life definitely puts it in the "R"-plus range.

Some friends took me to see this film in Helsinki. I really had no idea what to expect. The evening started, as evenings at the cinema do, with a series of trailers. There came what seemed to be a trailer for a French film featuring an ageing chanteuse (shades of a Gallic Madonna perhaps) performing in front of a young, hysterical audience. I thought that there was a film I would not go and see…

… and then it turned out it wasn't a trailer, but the start of the evening's main entertainment. The first five minutes set a scene, and a plot line appeared to be established. Not a particularly enthralling plot, perhaps, but something which might carry us along.

How wrong we were. The plot got stuck in a Paris hotel suite, and the characterisation wasn't even skin deep. The chanteuse – Lauren, or Sylvia – was a diva with problems. But not interesting problems, or dramatic problems; just time-consuming ones. She had some sort of artistic block. She sent a star-struck fan who had implausibly joined her entourage, Lucie, not to buy drugs, but to buy tampons. She was mobbed by fans, a strange and unconvincing mixture, who mostly looked like thirty-something resting actors told to wear something red and plastic. She had family problems of some sort. It was immensely boring. For all I know it perked up in its last forty minutes. But by then we were already in a nearby restaurant wondering why this film should have been made, let alone marketed, or rated by the critics.

There was one good line, when the diva's agent or boyfriend or whatever said that "she likes to appear wild, but underneath she's as dead as her stuffed deer" - a major feature of the hotel suite, which did indeed give a livelier performance than most of the cast. Let that be the epitaph for this exceptionally disappointing movie.

A teen-age fan of a Madonna-eque pop star ends up befriending the star, and before long all sorts of boundaries start getting crossed. Picture a dash of "All About Eve", a little "3 Women", and mix in some "Almost Famous" and you have some of the feel of this dark, but fun brew.

Terrific performances by the two protagonists – Emmanuelle Seigner as the singer, Islid Le Besco as her obsessed teen protégé drive the film, making scenes that could have seemed ridiculous ring oddly true, if strange.

Not everything works. Among other things the singer's music feels far too cute and generic to drive the kind of dark obsession we see. And some twists stretch credulity or reason at moments. But if Bergman had directed "About Famous" we might have gotten something a little like this heady mess of sexuality, loss of self, obsession, complex familial relationships being created and destroyed, loss of innocence, etc. etc.