Jack­ie

Jack­ie is not a con­ven­tion­al biopic. Expec­ta­tions may veer towards a film about the after­math of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion told from the per­spec­tive of his wid­ow, Jacque­line Kennedy Onas­sis, to be based around tubthump­ing emo­tion­al cli­max­es. Instead, Chilean direc­tor Pablo Larraín riffs on the First Lady’s poised appear­ance, show­ing the will required to keep con­trol in the worst of cir­cum­stances. The result is a gor­geous, lay­ered por­trait of a woman deter­mined to put pub­lic image ahead of pri­vate feelings.

The goal of com­mu­ni­cat­ing dif­fer­ent lay­ers of Jackie’s char­ac­ter is clear from the start­ing pis­tol. Natal­ie Port­man, with cheek­bones jut­ting, walks through pris­tine, monied 1960s sur­round­ings to Mica Levi’s orches­tral score. The music is riv­en with pri­mal dark­ness, swoop­ing to hold in the murky heart­break. Incon­gru­ence between the wild sound and chic vision indi­cates the ambi­tions of a film­mak­er who crafts images of peo­ple while remain­ing mind­ful that auto- por­traits are made from messier material.

Jack­ie is Larraín’s first Eng­lish-lan­guage film and the one with most main­stream poten­tial thanks to the cast­ing of Port­man. Still, it retains a sinewy intel­li­gence that is the director’s trade­mark. From his sec­ond fea­ture, 2008’s Tony Manero, about a Sat­ur­day Night Fever-obsessed killer in ​’70s Chile, up to his forth­com­ing film, the poet­ic Neru­da (out in the UK in April), Larraín has made char­ac­ter stud­ies that trust audi­ences to search the sweep of a film for mean­ing, using the for­mal poten­tial of cin­e­ma to explore what peo­ple are like, rather than sad­dling an actor with rev­e­la­to­ry baggage.

Portman’s per­for­mance har­monis­es with Larraín’s vision of affec­ta­tion and depth. On the one hand she, in her Chanel suits and with a stud­ied accent, is as stylised as the White House inte­ri­ors and the film’s pic­ture-per­fect com­po­si­tion. On the oth­er hand, she is ragged with grief. That her feel­ings are sub­li­mat­ed beneath mat­ters of state make them all the more poignant.

The per­son­al, polit­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal form a cross-pol­li­nat­ing motor that is expressed main­ly through hushed con­ver­sa­tions. Peter Sars­gaard is unrecog­nis­able as Bob­by Kennedy beneath a thatch of hair and dig­ni­fied phys­i­cal­i­ty. It’s a thrill to watch con­sid­ered por­tray­als of the Kennedys (‘the beau­ti­ful peo­ple’) but lest the pic­ture y away into shal­low­ness, Noah Oppenheim’s script drops anchor in the mat­ter of Jackie’s iden­ti­ty – a chimera. LIFE jour­nal­ist Theodore H White (Bil­ly Crudup) has the access, but with terms. Most of the peo­ple around the FLO­TUS deal with a pro­fes­sion­al con­cerned with for­mal­i­ties. Jackie’s per­son­al sec­re­tary and friend, Nan­cy (Gre­ta Ger­wig) offers warmth and is thanked with a low­ered-guard. The Priest (John Hurt) enables access to her spir­i­tu­al gloom.

There is no res­o­lu­tion, no baby pink inner ker­nel of Jack­ie to take away. What endures are images – images of the inevitable pain of being this woman at this time. These amount to Jack­ie show­er­ing off her husband’s blood, Jackie’s face in the win­dow of a car that reflects droves of bystanders, Jack­ie chang­ing into her red dress to dance in sor­row to ​‘Camelot’.