Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (Paul McGuigan, 2017)

Based on the final months in the life of the Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame, in the last stages of cancer and finding refuge with the family of her English former lover Peter Turner, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool is, through necessity, elegiac in tone and also has obvious echoes of Sunset Boulevard with a fading star and her accordingly fragile ego. Ageing is a constant theme, not just in the final moments of the story but already in the flashbacks to when she and the far younger Peter were first together. What really elevates a fairly rudimentary structure in the end is Annette Bening's performance as Grahame: at turns coquettish, vain, sardonic and brittle, the character fits her talents and presence like a glove.

6/10