George Clooney film praised as ‘midlife crisis masterpiece’

There’s a line in George Clooney’s new film where one character tells him: “You’re the American dream, the last of the great movie stars.”

It’s a comment which could easily apply to Clooney in real life, and one of several parallels between the US actor and the ageing movie star he plays in Netflix’s Jay Kelly, which has just launched at the Venice Film Festival.

A hugely successful actor playing a hugely successful actor may not sound like much of a stretch. But Clooney’s performance goes much deeper than that, portraying an actor who finds himself feeling strangely empty as he reflects on his life choices.

The fictional Kelly may be adored by everyone and greeted with a slice of cheesecake wherever he goes (a stipulation of his rider), but as he reflects on his career and legacy, he begins to grapple with how much family life he missed out on.

“There was something compelling to us about the premise of a movie star going through a crisis and going on a journey that was a physical journey, but also an interior, psychological journey,” explains director Noah Baumbach.

Jay Kelly’s somewhat lacking sense of self, he adds, “became a way to try to wrestle with this notion of who we are, and how we want to make peace with this gap between how we present ourselves and who we might actually be”.

Clooney may have spent much of the last decade directing films while only occasionally appearing in them, but in Jay Kelly, he is firmly back in movie star mode.

While the film is an unabashed crowd-pleaser, the subtlety of Clooney’s performance could put him in the awards conversation in the coming months, in a year where the best actor race is packed with A-listers.

The film sees its leading man suddenly down tools, a week before he’s due to start shooting a movie, after a string of setbacks including the death of a close friend and a heated encounter with his former college roommate (played by Billy Crudup).

With no warning, Kelly decides to fly to Europe to spend time with his daughters and get his head together – albeit with a stop-off in Italy to collect a lifetime achievement prize.

His entourage – including his publicist (Laura Dern) and stylist (Emily Mortimer) – are forced to follow them, as Kelly shows characteristically little interest in their lives compared with his own.

But his various assistants gradually peel off one by one and head back to the US as they realise Kelly is serious about potentially giving up his career.

One person who stays by his side, however, his his manager Ron, played by Adam Sandler, in a performance which reminds audiences how good a dramatic actor he is when not doing comedy.

“As an actor, when you read a script like this you say, ‘Holy [expletive], I can’t believe I’m getting this gift,” Sandler tells journalists.

Of course, Sandler, Dern and Crudup are stars in their own right – and all agree the film helped them reflect on their relationships with the people who surround them in the Hollywood publicity machine.

“I’ve always appreciated my manager, agent, publicist, I just know how hard they work and how difficult it is to hear my ups and downs in life and back me up no matter what,” says Sandler.

“But I do appreciate what they do, and I was excited to play a man who is devoted to somebody. And I admire everybody who does that and how much it means to them.”

Dern says she relished the opportunity to play “the role of the people who have helped raise me in my professional life”, and describes her publicist as “a mother figure”, particularly early in her career after she began acting aged 11.

She too, intends to be more considerate and aware of her own power as a celebrity. “Did I know that my publicist has a family? I definitely did, but I definitely want to be that much more mindful now,” she says.

Early reactions to the film have varied wildly in Venice. In a five-star review, the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin described it as a “midlife crisis masterpiece”, and highlighted the final scene as a “knockout”.

“[Jay Kelly] looks like Clooney. He acts like Clooney,” Collin said. “But perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to cleanly equate one man with the other – because Jay Kelly isn’t Jay Kelly either, and that’s the problem.”

The Independent’s Geoffrey McNab awarded four stars, writing: “If Clooney is playing yet another variation on himself in Jay Kelly, at least he’s doing so in a far more raw and revealing way than he has ever done before.”

But a one-star review from the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said it was a “dire, sentimental and self-indulgent film”.

Clooney may be in Venice for the film’s premiere and has posed for photos on red carpets, but he is missing from the traditional press conference due to a sinus infection – “Even movie stars get sick,” jokes Baumbach.

But there is still huge excitement on the ground for Jay Kelly – a name which, many viewers might notice, sounds suspiciously similar to George Clooney.

“I’ve known George over the years and I’ve been wanting to find something to do with him, and early on [when writing the script], we began to say, this is going to be George,” Baumbach says of writing the script with Mortimer.

Actors often try to avoid playing versions of themselves on screen – it’s far more fashionable to go through a significant transformation. But Baumbach says in this case Clooney’s real-life popularity was more of a help than a hindrance.

“I felt it was important the audience watching the movie have a relationship with the actor playing the character.

“The character is running from himself for so much of the movie, deflecting and trying to hide, and what essentially I was asking of George was to reveal more and more of himself as he does it.”

The Oscars might be months away, but Clooney is one of several A-listers already getting into position for what is likely to be a competitive year for the best actor race.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet, Daniel Day-Lewis and Dwayne Johnson are just a handful of the names starring in films which are being geared towards an awards season campaign in the coming months.

It’s also fair to say that Hollywood always enjoys a film about itself – which could stand Jay Kelly in good stead come awards season.

Clooney, 64, could easily score a Golden Globe nod and is eyeing his first Oscar nomination for acting since The Descendants in 2012 – but we’ll have to wait until much later in the season to see how his performance stacks up against others.

Baumbach himself is no stranger to Oscar voters (his 2019 film Marriage Story scored Dern an Oscar), and he is back on form after his poorly received last film, White Noise.

The director reflects: “If you make a movie about an actor, you’re making a movie about identity and performance and a search for self.”

“Actors are always trying to find themselves within a character, and asking where they fit in, it’s a character outside themselves. And I think it was something we felt we are all doing essentially as we go through life.”