An Obsessed Fan Happy To Be Just Friends

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The New York Sun

At the start of the French drama “Backstage,” an ambush-style television show brings a pop idol to the home of a small-town teen. The starstruck girl, totally overcome by what might as well be an apparition of the Virgin Mary, locks herself in her room. Later, full of regret, she hitchhikes to Paris to catch the singer in her hotel and, surprisingly, succeeds in bonding with the diva. From supplicant to confidante in 24 short hours.

Films about fans often unfurl the word to its original length: fanatics, who stalk or kill to possess what they love. Lucie (Isild Le Besco) is obsessed but starts by simply befriending the object of her desire, the volatile chanteuse Lauren Waks (Emmanuelle Seignier). In creating this odd couple, the director Emmanuelle Bercot attempts to explore the fan/star relationship for its currents of intimacy and distance, of mystique and empathy that also swirl in any sudden, passionate connection between two people.

“Backstage,” which opens today at Film Forum, does eventually go “Behind the Music,” so to speak. The neurotic star risks cracking up from her drug of choice — in her case, the memory of an exboyfriend — as she flubs recordings and holes up in her luxe hotel room. By the time Lucie, who becomes a live-in assistant, meets that dark, handsome, and grungy ex (Samuel Benchetrit), the movie loses traction and focus.

But Ms. Seignier, and especially Ms. Le Besco, lighted by the luminescent cinematography of Agnès Godard, imbue their friendship with a charged, almost ecstatic aura that is hard to turn away from. Lucie is so enthralled with the breathy singer’s stage persona as a delicate, cloaked virginal loner trudging through the night that she won’t accept the star’s actual life of sexual abandon and mercurial jags. Lauren welcomes Lucie’s mothering and companionship but also phases in and out of an aloofness shaded with a seductive playfulness. (“Keep a grip on her,” Lucie’s mother warns on her visit, arousing a smile from Lauren.)

Ms. Le Besco, a fixture of Ms. Bercot’s films as well as those of Benoit Jacquot, excels as this rapt young innocent in ecstasy but with one foot on earth. There’s a childlike softness and delicacy to her flushed complexion and facial contours, and her eyes always seem to bear the bruised squint of recent tears. Her Lucie strikes out into treacherous territories of trust, fear, and desire.

As the pop star, Ms. Seignier is no less expressive, resembling Blondie’s Debbie Harry a bit with more of a scowling brow, which she can just as well dissolve with panic. Playing fictional stars is a meta-challenge, which many actors simply coast through; few can muster the wattage to deserve the screaming hordes in concert scenes or at hotel entrances. Ms. Seignier, with her larger-than-life model frame, often shot at a bit of a remove, finds a sweet spot as an elusive object of desire.

Ms. Godard, the cinematographer, specializes in a look both transcendent and sensual (most famously in Claire Denis’s 1999 masterpiece “Beau Travail”), and though she’s stuck filming a lot of hotel interiors, it’s a good match for this film’s experience of fame up close. The way she lights Ms. Le Besco recalls her work with another unformed soul, the fragile homeless youth played by Natascha Regnier in “The Dreamlife of Angels.”

But, as with fame, “Backstage” as a film has quite a bit of dirt behind the daydream. The intensity of the central relationship can’t conceal a hollow sense of point of view, wearying after two hours, and the establishment of an instant bond can be hard to swallow. Supporting characters range from adequate (Lauren’s factotum, Juliette, played by Noémie Lvovsky) to facile (Mr. Benchetrit’s underwritten ex, for one, and Jean-Paul Walle Wa Wana’s bodyguard, whose daughter died in a fall he couldn’t prevent).

Then there’s the metaphorical stuffed deer that unaccountably resides in Lauren’s suite. But the two actors at the core of the film help it veer around the potholes common to stories of fame. Glowing through its performances but uneven, “Backstage” is like a good concert that could have been better.


The New York Sun

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