Avis Metacritic

As “Faye” presents it, Dunaway was too volcanic and troubled a personality not to pour herself into her roles. That’s part of what made her great. Yet the film also wants to cue us to the gossipy and reductive way that this kind of thinking has too often been applied to her.

Perhaps foremost, “Faye” allows its subject to be, or at least appear, as big, complicated and multifaceted as her life and career, in both the highs and lows, would suggest.

As with any documentary where the star tells the story, “Faye” occasionally comes off a little lighter than a more objective look might have been.

For those of us who have loved Faye Dunaway in movies, Bouzereau’s doc will be bittersweet viewing. It re-examines her run of brilliant, blazing performances in a handful of New Hollywood classics but also leaves us to ponder how brutally she was sidelined, uncommonly so for a movie star of her stature

We are set up to dislike her, but we do not. We like her very much, despite, or thanks to, the potent sense of diva that lingers in the air.

The film struggles to find an appropriate ending for a woman who’s itching to get back to work.

Faye isn’t an exposé. It’s a misty-eyed homage made in collaboration with its subject – and one that relies too heavily on allusion and inference to be truly candid or revelatory.

Respectful if not revelatory, Bouzereau’s film gives her legacy a massage, gently probing, but also leaving her in peace.