Maps to the Stars movie review (2014) | Little White Lies

Maps to the Stars

27 Sep 2014 / Released: 26 Sep 2014

A woman with long blonde hair, wearing a black top, resting her head on her hands at a kitchen counter, with a cup and crumpled tissues nearby.
A woman with long blonde hair, wearing a black top, resting her head on her hands at a kitchen counter, with a cup and crumpled tissues nearby.
5

Anticipation.

It’s always exciting to welcome in a new movie by David Cronenberg.

4

Enjoyment.

This ethereal Greek tragedy is the West Coast cousin of Cosmopolis.

4

In Retrospect.

Incest is wrong, you guys. But it makes for a really interesting film.

David Cro­nen­berg indulges in a grotesque inter-fam­i­ly orgy on the gold­en side­walks of Hollywood.

Dimin­ish­ing returns are usu­al­ly the order of the day for film­mak­ers with long, sto­ried careers. Time tends to sap away that dis­tinc­tive ener­gy, sagac­i­ty and rhythm. The work becomes tat­ty, dulled with each new iter­a­tion. And for those estab­lished artists who dare to move away from their sig­na­ture style – either seek­ing per­son­al truth or dogged­ly attempt­ing to out­run obso­les­cence – the trans­for­ma­tion is as rarely as rich, unique or time­ly as their cel­e­brat­ed past works. With Cos­mopo­lis and Maps to the Stars, David Cro­nen­berg has avoid­ed both of these pos­si­ble fates and cre­at­ed a pair of astute films which inter­face with each oth­er in ways that are dis­tinc­tive from the films (and inter­ests) for which he is known.

So what does Cronenberg’s new flesh look like? Pal­lid, but with a slight glow. Maps begins with a girl rid­ing a Grey­hound bus. With­out speak­ing, we under­stand that she’s strange in a way that comes down to brain chem­istry, not con­trar­i­an impuls­es. Her black satin crew jack­et and elbow-length leather gloves accen­tu­ate her chalk­i­ness, while her blunt mousy brown bob hair­cut (that looks like she cut it her­self ) makes clear it’s not just her burn scars that are pre­vent­ing her from being a beau­ty await­ing dis­cov­ery at Schwab’s Pharmacy.

Make-up free, the expres­sion on her face is some­where between starstruck and dazed by her lengthy jour­ney, as she rous­es the world’s favourite UV- avoid­ing lead­ing man, Robert Pat­tin­son, who is snooz­ing in the driver’s seat of a limo. As he dri­ves her around the city, their forced con­ver­sa­tion reveals our intu­itions to be fact: Agatha (Mia Wasikows­ka) has trav­elled from Jupiter, Flori­da to Los Ange­les after befriend­ing Car­rie Fish­er on Twit­ter and becomes an assis­tant to washed-up C‑lister Havana Seg­rand (Julianne Moore); Jerome (Pat­tin­son) is a but­toned-up writer/​actor whose major accom­plish­ment besides mak­ing rent is get­ting a bit part in Blue Matrix, a post 9÷11” sci-fi series in the vein of Bat­tlestar Galactica.

Even though he’s the neg­a­tive image of the invest­ment banker he played in Cos­mopo­lis (or per­haps the same char­ac­ter, but rein­car­nat­ed in a low­er sta­tion as a pun­ish­ment for past sins), Jerome is the alpha in this pair­ing of pale meets pale. Dur­ing their sec­ond ren­dezvous, Agatha makes an unsuc­cess­ful pass at him, but as the two con­tin­ue to serendip­i­tous­ly run into each oth­er, they start a casu­al sex­u­al rela­tion­ship whose preda­to­ry over­tones are imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent, but treat­ed in a dev­as­tat­ing­ly sub­tle fash­ion. That is to say, his true feel­ings for her, or ben­e­fits beyond get­ting off, are ful­ly masked while they’re togeth­er – she nev­er wavers in her belief that he’s a nice guy,” because he nev­er gives her rea­son to. When lat­er asked by Havana if she takes her gloves off dur­ing sex, or if his friends have met her, Jerome grins and fid­gets, demur­ring, I’m kind of try­ing to write a script about it… Everything’s research on some level.”

Such real­is­tic cru­el­ty is often passed over for Big Moments in con­tem­po­rary satire, and it’s lim­it­ing to claim that Maps is mere­ly writer Bruce Wagner’s most recent attempt to exco­ri­ate his co-work­ers and for­mer co-work­ers in the Hills. (Tonal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, it shares a great deal with Eve­lyn Waugh’s The Loved One’, which was also con­ceived from a failed film adap­ta­tion.) Sim­i­lar­ly, it’s impor­tant to empha­sise the pale­ness of the actors’ skin tones – which applies to all the leads (Olivia Williams, John Cusack, Evan Bird, Moore, and most of all, Sarah Gadon) – not to put for­ward some racial puri­ty agen­da or apol­o­gise for yet anoth­er inde­pen­dent film that has no sub­stan­tial non-white char­ac­ters, but because if this were deeply invest­ed in a satir­i­cal edge, every­one would be sprayed head-to-toe in fake tan. Instead, the ghost­ly colour of the actors rein­forces the idea that the dead chil­dren Agatha’s broth­er Ben­jie (Bird) starts see­ing, and Clarice (Gadon), the return­ing spir­it of Havana’s moth­er, are just as real as the trou­bled actors they’re vis­it­ing upon.

As Moore sobs and con­torts her face in new and hor­ri­fy­ing ways, it seems like­ly some­one sent her a link to the eight-minute super­cut of her cry­ing in oth­er films”

In the world of Maps, incest – which can be under­stood as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of nar­cis­sism – has giv­en Ben­jie, Agatha, and Havana this spe­cial sight. Wagner’s long­time affil­i­a­tion with Car­los Castaneda’s Clear­green cor­po­ra­tion and his rela­tion­ship to mys­ti­cism sug­gests that their role in the nar­ra­tive is lit­er­al, not hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry. While Agatha and Ben­jie attempt to block it out with pills (some pre­scribed by doc­tors, oth­ers not), Havana tries to work through it with a spe­cial home vis­it reiki/​regression therapy/​lifecoaching/​high impact mas­sage tech­nique prac­ticed by Agatha and Benjie’s father, Dr Stafford Weiss (Cusack). Cronenberg’s cam­era also feels like it has popped a Xanax, nev­er get­ting too close to the emo­tion­al gore.

Though Cusack doesn’t have the right grav­i­tas or vocal tim­bre for a TV shrink who has an apho­rism for every sit­u­a­tion, the sal­va­tion he has on offer is inten­tion­al­ly dull and gener­ic, an anti-gestalt: he’s a de fac­to leader for those who are per­pet­u­al­ly stuck in dys­func­tion­al cycles, and is not long from being deposed by some­one equal­ly unre­mark­able. Actu­al­ly solv­ing the prob­lem of sub­stance abuse or the need for atten­tion and approval would kill the mar­ket; the weight loss and beau­ty indus­tries fig­ured this out a long time ago.

Along with shar­ing a father fig­ure in Dr Weiss, Ben­jie and Havana share a sis­ter in Agatha. Havana’s feel­ings towards her, aug­ment­ed by what­ev­er semi-legal scrips she’s downed that day, run the gamut from pity­ing moth­er­ly” con­cern to Malef­i­cent-style jeal­ousy and pun­ish­ment; the moment which best sums up their high­ly unpro­fes­sion­al pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship is when Havana, con­sti­pat­ed and high as a kite, gives Agatha sex advice while on the toi­let. It’s essen­tial­ly a more real­is­ti­cal­ly dis­gust­ing ver­sion of the all-female bath­room pow-wow that fea­tured in the first episode of Lena Dunham’s Girls.

Known more for being sex­u­al­ly abused by her moth­er than as an actress, Havana’s great­est desire is to lit­er­al­ly become her moth­er Clarice, play­ing her (despite being far too old) in a behind-the-scenes remake of her 60s-era career-defin­ing role. Hol­ly­wood pla­gia­ris­es itself and – as the ghost of Clarice insists between recit­ing lines of Paul Éluard’s 1943 poem Lib­erté’ – the molesta­tion charges are bor­rowed from some­where else. Havana’s response is histri­on­ic and show stop­ping. As Moore sobs and con­torts her face in new and hor­ri­fy­ing ways, it seems like­ly some­one sent her a link to the eight-minute super­cut of her cry­ing in oth­er films, or Bar­bara Steele in Shivers.

Ben­jie, a neo­phyte Hol­ly­wood fuck-up, has already been to rehab at 13 and blown through the sev­en-fig­ure pay­cheques he earned aged nine as the star of the Bad Babysit­ter fran­chise. As the recov­er­ing alco­holic who is now con­fined to sip­ping giant cans of ener­gy drink at par­ties, he vom­its after a (nec­es­sary) bootlick­ing meet­ing with a group of stu­dio exec­u­tives and can bare­ly con­nect with his friends; sobri­ety, it turns out, is a nev­er-end­ing series of defeats. But his reac­tion to the Éluard-quoting ghosts that vis­it him make clear that he’s a Shia LaBeouf, not a Justin Bieber – the increas­ing vio­lence and irra­tional­i­ty to his man­ic out­bursts belie not just ego, but a socio­path­ic fail­ure to under­stand that oth­er peo­ple are, well, peo­ple. His cold­ness is per­haps the most dis­turb­ing ele­ment to Maps, and when reunit­ed with the fatal­is­tic Agatha, their com­bined efforts result in an all-con­sum­ing, fiery Greek tragedy.

Though some things that befall the char­ac­ters are clear­ly evitable, it’s like­ly that these damned char­ac­ters nev­er had any agency in the first place. Agatha is the only one who sees things clearly.

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