CHow to recognize reality from fiction? It is one of the most profound questions of Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach’s new film with George Clooney on Netflix starting today. A melancholy reflection, between lights and shadows, about the meaning of success and the weight of a life not fully lived. Hollywood looks to the past to understand the emptiness of her present, devoured by her own ambition. The cast also features a magnificent Adam Sandler and two Italian actors: Alba Rohrwacher and Giovanni Esposito.
Jay Kelly on Netflix, plot of the film with George Clooney
Jay Kelly (Clooney) is one seasoned Hollywood actor very famous and quite talented who he neglected his family for his work. Ha a great manager, Ron (Adam Sandler) who he considers a great friend and a precious press office, Liz (Laura Dern), always available to solve any problem. He just finished shooting his latest film and now he has a few weeks before returning to the set.
He hopes to succeed in spend this long break with my daughters. With the largestJessica (Riley Keough), who is a teacher, it doesn’t get along and thinks he has always neglected her. With Daisy (Grace Edwards), the youngest, who will soon be going to university, cmistakenly claims to have a greater bond. She, however, has already planned a trip to Europe with his friends.
He has no intention of giving it up for a father who is never there. What makes it even sadder is the news That Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the elderly director who discovered him and made him a star is dead suddenly. Jay hadn’t seen him in months: the last time they saw each other they had had an argument. Peter, fresh from many fiascos and bankruptcy, had asked him to star in his new film: with his name in the cast he would have obtained a lot of financing. Jay, however, careful of his image, told him no.
George Clooney “Jay Kelly” (Netflix)
Who is Jay Kelly?
During the funeral ceremony, she meets Timothy (Billy Crudup), former roommate when, in their early twenties, they attended the same acting class. Overwhelmed by loneliness and guilt, agree to have a drink with him, remembering the past. Timothy was the most talented aspiring actor, the one destined for success. Then came the audition with Peter. Jay had accompanied him to help him read the script during the casting but, unexpectedly, he had stolen his lines and stolen the part.
This painful flashback leads the two to argue and punching each other. Furthermore, Timothy informs him that he is friends with Jessica on social media and that she thinks his father is soulless, an empty shell. News that hits him deeply. Suddenly, he decides not to make the next film and to join his younger daughter in Europe.
This change puts his entire entourage in difficulty who, once again, have to sacrifice their private life for the star. In his desires, the trip could straighten out his empty existence and make things right with his daughters, with his father and even with himself. A faint hope that breaks when he understands the difference between acting on set and doing it in real life.
The cast: Clooney, Sandler, Alba Rohrwacher, Giovanni Esposito
George Clooney, more than looking like Clark Gable in an identity crisis, comes close to the passive aggressive ambition of Tom Grunick (William Hurt) protagonist of Inside the news. A journalist with a well-hidden and immoderate desire for success who, in the end, is forced to feign emotion in the face of a misfortune to steal empathy from his audience. Jay is neither good nor bad but that’s just how he is, exactly like those around him.
If Jey Kelly he involuntarily misses shots the cast of actors, in addition to the star of ER perfectly in part, it is a concentration of majestic interpreters. Above all, the always underrated Adam Sandler and the incisive Billy Crudup. Sandler offers his Ron the ambivalence of a professional who dedicates his entire life to his client who demands friendship but reminds him, every time, that he is paid for it. Crudup, in a single, long sequence, shows his nemesis all his smallness and meanness.
In the movie, in a small partthey are there too local actors like Alba Rohrwacher, as an enthusiastic festival collaborator and Giovanni Esposito in one of the organizers.
George Clooney and Adam Sandler in “Jay Kelly” (Netflix)
Jay Kellythe review
Noah Baumbach he uses the innate stardom of his actor hero to tellbetween lights and shadows, the relationship between fame and the loss of identity. A fragment of metacinema which brings to mind the melodramatic whims of the actors as in a Truffaut film (Night effect) the melancholic grandeur of Fellini (8½) or Alvy Singer’s ironic looks into the past in Me and Annie. Jay Kelly, However, it never reaches their intellectual depths but it limits itself to portraying someone who has always chosen only that certain “him”discovering that he didn’t even like it.
In conclusionas he reveals Sylvia Plath, It’s really hard to be yourself. In the second part, a layer of gloom envelops and erases the initial comedic tones. We go through Jay’s childhood joy in contact with ordinary people, from which he has always stayed away, until the disturbing (and useless) sequence of the purse thief. Not to mention the trip to Tuscany: from a hypothetical genius loci, which invites reflection, it is transformed into a banal tourist postcard.