The Tender Bar is the eighth feature film signed by George Clooney as director. His choices are so eclectic in this area that we still don’t really know what his personality as a filmmaker is or what he tends to communicate. His new opus is easy to watch, but does not stand out in any way in a genre – the initiatory story – which is already very popular.
The main attraction of this film is the reconstruction of the period, not only in the sets, objects and accessories, but also in the evocation of a state of mind belonging to another era. It would have been preferable if the same care had been taken in the scenario, yet signed by the hand of veteran William Monahan (The Departed, Body of Lies). The account he drew from the autobiographical book by journalist JR Moehringer, published in 2005, indeed contains a few incongruities which do not escape the viewer.
The characters who surround the protagonist (Daniel Ranieri plays him as a child and Tye Sheridan takes him back to adulthood) would undoubtedly have benefited from being better defined in a story which, in truth, contains no suspense.
Almost everything is said in the narration. The gap between the child’s vision of the drama that his mother (Lily Rabe) is going through, which is not one in his eyes, could also have been better translated.
That said, The Tender Bar comes to life thanks to Ben Affleck. In the role of this charming uncle, who takes the child under his wing and introduces him to literature – the bar he runs is called The Dickens – the actor finds one of his most beautiful roles. Again, it would still have been interesting to learn a little more about the life of this mature man of whom we do not really know how, or why, he still lives with his parents (where his sister, JR’s mother, is is also a refugee), except that we suspect a gambling and alcohol addiction which is hardly ever mentioned. By dint of wanting to erase, with a few exceptions, all the roughness of existence, George Clooney gave birth to a pleasant film, but a little too smooth.
Available on Amazon Prime Video.
Drama
The Tender Bar
George clooney
With Ben Affleck, Tye Sheridan, Lily Rabe
1 h 44