George Clooney's midlife crisis

The new movie by Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha) proposes a fascinating game of mirrors. In it, Jay Kelly, the mature movie star played by George Clooney, functions simultaneously as a reflection of the actor and as alter ego from the filmmaker. The result is an emotional and lighthearted take on earlier films that have reflected on celebrity as a simulacrum, the personal cost of creative work, and cinema as a substitute for life. Baumbach, who had already dissected his divorce in Marriage Story, now carries out his particular 8 1/2This theme is revealed in the film through its protagonist, a dazzling star with a distant relationship with her daughters who, in the midst of a midlife crisis, looks back melancholically on her past and wonders who she really is, and if all the sacrifices have been worth it.

As in the similar The heroIn Satyajit Ray's film, in which a famous actor travels by train through India to collect an award, Clooney's character journeys across half of Europe to be honored at an Italian festival. The stereotypical portrayal of an Italy seemingly lifted from a Fellini film is questionable, but having an actor as the protagonist allows Baumbach, on the one hand, to delve into the identity crisis of a man (of himself?) who, having lived his entire adult life immersed in fiction; on the other hand, to cast an empathetic gaze upon the sacrificed around of the star, where the overwhelmed agent, played by Adam Sandler with overflowing humanity, stands out. In the exciting denouement of Jay Kelly, an uneven and sometimes self-indulgent film but as irresistible as the smile of its protagonist, Clooney and Sandler find, sitting in a movie theater, the answer they were looking for: in the end, when time passes and everything is over, what will remain are the movies.