At the recent Cannes Film Festival, Demi Moore’s two-decade-old fading star shone brightly again with her performance in The Substancea radical satire of misogyny and female ageism in Hollywood. However, on the fringes of the competition, another beautiful comeback took place: that of Faye Dunaway, through the fabulous documentary Fayeby Laurent Bouzereau… which deals among other things with misogyny and female ageism in Hollywood. Exceptionally gifted, the star of Bonnie and Clyde, ChinatownAnd Network (TV Takeover), which won her an Oscar, was given an early reputation as a “difficult” actress and had an up-and-down career: all this, and more, is examined and commented on.
From the outset, the film shows us exactly what we expect, namely a montage showing the preparations for the interview, while Faye Dunaway gets impatient, asks about the angle of the shot, criticizes it, does her own hair, grimaces… before bursting out laughing and saying to the director: “You see how it is with me: it’s not easy.” From the outset, this self-mockery confronts us with our preconceptions.
However, and this is one of the most fascinating aspects of Fayethe main character never seems to be seeking approval or sympathy from the public. On the contrary, she is disarmingly frank, particularly about her bipolar disorder, which she is talking about for the first time. Hence her sometimes “extreme” behavior during certain shoots, before the diagnosis and medication came. Anyone familiar with this disorder will be moved by the lucidity with which Faye Dunaway talks about it.
Certainly, her reputation as a “difficult” actress comes partly from there, but not only. In fact, it is mainly attributable to the fact that she demands a lot from others, because she demands a lot from herself. He who directed her in NetworkSidney Lumet told James Grissom in an interview: “A smart actor thrives on details, and this desire, this thirst for details, is often characterized—wrongly—as difficult behavior; a caricature of a ‘method’ actor, or the whims of an inflated ego. But it is simply a good worker who demands his tools in order to do the job required. Faye [Dunaway] has this need and demands this detail, and because she’s smart and extraordinarily insightful, she demands a lot of it, and if you do even half the research that she does, you get incredible results.”
The participants (including Lumet, in the archives, but not for this quote) are worth the detour. This is especially true of Liam Dunaway O’Neill, Faye Dunaway’s only son, who displays a remarkable blend of eloquence and acuity in speaking about his mother—the woman And of the actress.
Sharon Stone, a long-time friend who was herself labelled “difficult” in her prime, also has some very pertinent observations to make.
In this regard, the documentary duly notes the fact that this negative label is much more often attached to actresses than to actors. And even when they drag a “reputation”, the latter continue, historically, to be much more in demand than the former (see Tom Hardy’s well-documented escapades on the film Mad Max: Fury Road / Mad Max. The Road to Chaos for a recent example).
Work hard
To return to the journey, by turns glorious and infamous, deeply atypical, and therefore immensely inspiring, of Faye Dunaway, Laurent Bouzereau was in this case the ideal director.
Author of works including The De Palma Cut, Hitchcock, Piece by PieceAnd Spielberg: The First Ten Yearsdocumentaries such as Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind And John Williamsand countless making-of of films ranging fromA Touch of Evil (The thirst for evil) has The Tree of Life (The tree of life), Passing by Deliverance (Deliverance) And Jaws (Jaws), Bouzereau is in fact THE specialist in Hollywood documentaries.
And as the written part of his work shows, he also has a highly developed analytical mind. These are all qualities that benefit the documentary. Faye.
Bouzereau is also judicious in his use of audiovisual archives. In an excerpt from a 1989 interview, Faye Dunaway discusses her desire to be an actress from the age of 5: “I thought if I worked hard enough, I could do it. Isn’t that the essence of the American dream?”
The dream, certainly, but the “work”, the effort: Faye Dunaway has always been conscientious. And to speak further of her mother, who instilled in her both this rigor and this desire to conquer.
No evasion
Obviously, we focus more on the masterpieces that are Bonnie and Clyde (which revolutionized the presentation of violence in cinema), Chinatown And Network (audacious, risky, her interpretation of a powerful woman as ruthless as a man created a school).
However, beautiful titles, like the excellent The Thomas Crown Affair (The Thomas Crown Affairwho was entitled to an elegant remake in which Dunaway participated), Barfly And Puzzle of a Downfall Childare there. In fact, a still from this film, showing Dunaway, was used as a poster for the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 — its director, Jerry Schatzberg, a former lover of the actress, is among the participants.
Faye Dunaway even willingly agrees to revisit the now cult classic Mommy Dearest (Dearest Mom), although this psychotronic biography of Joan Crawford (another famously “difficult” star) derailed her career in the early 1980s.
This is not surprising, since throughout, whether dealing with this painful episode or remembering a happier one, Dunaway speaks without evasion, defiantly, and so, so inspiring.