In his Cannes Film Festival review of “Maps to the Stars,” our own Drew McWeeny praised actress Julianne Moore for being “the one person in the film that truly gets the tone right.” David Cronenberg's Hollywood satire isn't earning much love on the critical front for its lucid attack on the movie business, but it sounds like Moore, as a neurotic actress chasing a theoretically life-changing role, cuts through it with her usual contemplative bravado. As Drew puts it, she plays it “like a person walking a tightrope over a yawning pit of psychosis, her every emotion bubbling up and threatening to knock her off.”
Onlookers can get a taste for exactly what that means with three new clips from “Maps to the Stars,” highlighting Moore's unhinged performance. In the first, Moore's Havana Segrand interrogates Agatha, played by Mia Wasikowska, with spine-tingling valleyspeak. In the second, Havana lets her agent have it after mistreatment during an audition for a Garry Marshall movie. Cronenberg cranks up the weird in the final snippet, a massage from John Cusack's therapist segueing to a barenaked threesome (that's still motivated by career ambition). Maybe it's the combination of her recent appearance in “The Canyons” compounded with her reality show, but is Moore's embodying a 50-year-old version of Lindsay Lohan? The affectation, the gripes, the mannerisms – it's all a little Lohan-y. And the “Mean Girls” star did have a blonde phase….
Moore gained Oscar traction after the Cannes-debut of “Map to the Stars,” but that subsided when the film's rollout plan solidified. Despite a European release in September, Focus World will hold the American debut for 2015, qualifying Moore for the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and SAG awards, but not the Academy Awards.
“Maps to the Stars” stars Moore, Wasikowska, Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, and Sarah Gadon. Watch the three clips below: