“Maps to the Stars” is a bleakly funny Hollywood satire from director David Cronenberg, a man who, throughout his whole career, could not be further from Hollywood. From his early body horror in “Shivers” right up to the stubborn impenetrability of “Cosmopolis,” Cronenberg has always been something of an outsider. As such, he’s the perfect man to give Tinseltown an autopsy, to peel off its flesh and expose the dark heart that throbs underneath -- and as we can always expect from him, he does so with a surgical finesse, as well as a delightfully macabre sense of humour.
The film’s setting is the showbiz scene of LA, right under the shadow of the Hollywood sign. It’s a world self-absorbed and cut off from the rest of society, with incessant talk of agents and movie roles and PR tactics. Leading the cast is Julianne Moore as Havana Segrand, an aging actress whose star is fading. In some sort of Freudian nightmare, Havana is desperate to play the role of her dead mother, herself a beloved Hollywood icon, in a remake of one of her mother’s old movies -- all the while the memory of her mother is driving her to madness. Havana is a complete diva, in one scene barking orders from the toilet. In another scene, she sings and dances with glee upon hearing of the death of a five-year-old boy (a death which could give her a significant career boost). She’s the kind of character you just love to hate, a nasty, selfish backstabber, and a completely unapologetic one. And Moore’s performance is a powerhouse, bursting with tears and spitting with venom.
And yet, Mia Wasikowska threatens to steal the show right from under Moore's feet. Wasikowska plays Agatha, a young woman who, soon after arriving in LA by bus, is hired as Havana’s personal assistant. Agatha is intriguingly mysterious, with a vague backstory, burn marks covering half her face, and her arms forever hidden behind long leather gloves. Wasikowska plays her with a bouncy excitement and a subtle craziness, and in a moment in which she performs a bizarre little dance routine in her hotel room, she completely owns the screen. Also among the cast are Robert Pattinson as a limousine driver and struggling actor/screenwriter, whom Agatha befriends; John Cusack as a pretentious TV psychologist; and Olivia Williams as Cusack’s wife, with whom he shares a long-buried secret. Evan Bird also does very good as Cusack and Williams’ son, a bratty, potty mouthed teen superstar with nothing but burning contempt for his adoring fans. Basically, he’s Justin Bieber, but worse.
Cronenberg is known for getting the best out of his actors: he did so with Pattinson in his last movie, “Cosmopolis,” squeezing a terrific lead performance from the “Twilight” star. And he does so with the cast of “Maps to the Stars,” who play up the grotesqueness to thoroughly entertaining, if repulsive, effect. Cronenberg is also known for his emotional detachment, for watching his characters like a biologist observing microbes through a microscope. Here, that detachment is a perfect fit. These are, after all, horrible, vacuous people, about whom there is precious little to like, nor care. Looking through the microscope certainly helps us to stomach them, and allows us to observe them with a clinical mixture of fascination and disgust.
Just as the film exposes Hollywood’s twisted underbelly, there are hints that there’s something going on underneath the film’s Hollywood satire surface: characters are curiously linked through fire and water, mental illness is a recurring theme, a famous movie monologue is repeated throughout, and there’s even some supernatural goings-on, with several characters haunted by ghostly visions. With so many weird and wonderful elements at play, the film is thrillingly unpredictable. And while the ending is not entirely satisfying, there are so many dark delights along the way that that doesn’t really matter. Those delights are pretty damn dark, it should be said: there’s murder, suicide, incest, dead children, pyromania and schizophrenia. But I guess that’s Hollywood for you.
Rating: 8/10
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