Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The first must-see film of the year.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

My wife and I watched this movie at home on DVD from our public library. Even though I now realize I have seen a few older movies with actress Gloria Grahame in them as this movie started I didn't realize it was about a real actress, mostly popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The filmmakers claim the movie is perhaps 98% faithful to the real story.Here it spans approximately 1979 through 1981, and flashbacks are often used to amplify on a point. Annette Bening, about the right age, is Gloria Grahame. When in England on a stage production she meets Jamie Bell, also about the right age, as Peter Turner from Liverpool. They strike up an unlikely friendship then romantic relationship. It becomes turbulent at times, no surprise since Grahame had been married four times before and had a child with each of her husbands.Both main actors are really good in their roles, especially Bening as Grahame, who in spite of her troubled life and sometimes erratic behavior comes across as a sympathetic character.Good movie, it is old news but see it for the performances.

This film tells the story of an accomplished female Hollywood film star who meets a young man in Liverpool.The film concentrates on the couple, who have strong personalities and share an unlikely relationship. The course of the story is unexpected, as I have not heard of Gloria Grahame before. It is a captivating story, and I feel rather sad when the film finished.

One of the most overlooked, exquisitely sensitive films of 2017 somehow slipped past all attention to awards. Based on a true story - published by Peter Turner in 1986 - of a late in life affair between screen icon Gloria Grahame and young actor Peter Turner - this film is radiantly beautiful. The screenplay adaptation is by Matt Greenhalgh and the sensitive direction is the work of Paul McGuigan.The story covers the years 1979 - 1981. In 1979 Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening) is in England starring on stage in The Glass Menagerie and flirts with young actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a bisexual young actor who falls under the spell of the femme fatale and despite the significant age difference they fall in love and begin and affair that is real, tender, and meaningful to both. As their mismatched romance waxes and wanes over time, events conspire to keep them in each other's lives even when it proves difficult and demanding. Ultimately, they find that they must each come to terms with whatever fate they face in the future whether they are together or apart. Grahame has breast cancer, a fact she conceals from Peter, and as she becomes close to Peter's family - mother Bella (Julie Walters), father Joe SR (Kenneth Cranham), and brother Joe Jr. (Stephen Graham) - she reveals her illness. On a trip to Los Angeles Gloria and Peter live together in Gloria's house trailer by the Pacific ocean, and are visited by Gloria's mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and sister Joy (Frances Barber) before they return to Peter's home in Liverpool. Gloria grows weaker and ultimately decides to return to her American physician for chemotherapy, escorted by one of her real sons Tim (Tom Brittney) from one of her four marriages, leaving Peter with love and concern that he care for his own family. The story is an affectionate, moving, and wryly humorous memoir of friendship, love, and stardom.Oscar worthy performances by Bening, Bell, Walters and the entire cast make this film luminous - one that needs to be seen more than once to fully appreciate all the fine qualities - acting, photography, musical score, and direction. Highly recommended

Love stories have always framed the narrative of humanity and our hunger for more is never sated. That's why we are fascinated by variations such as gender and age inversions which challenge conventional romantic expectations. They also frame the dramatic bio-pic Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017), a love story of an ageing femme fatale with a film title that evokes the vanity of stardom. Based on the real-life romance between Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening) and Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), the story unfolds through a series of artfully constructed flashbacks over a decade. We meet them in a 1970s London boarding house, when Turner was at the start of a hopeful career in acting and the 1947 Oscar winning Grahame was barely surviving in theatre and television. The over-awed young actor immediately succumbs to Grahame's star aura and they become lovers. Turner's working-class Liverpool family are astonished when the revered Hollywood star visits their modest home and their shock at the age difference soon dissipates. When Grahame is diagnosed with a terminal illness, the family provides emotional support until her American family intervene.While this dialogue-rich character study is not for everyone, Annette Bening's tour-de-force performance is extraordinary for its portrayal of the darkest and lightest side of the same person. Two details mentioned early linger throughout the film to complicate our view of this relationship between an older woman and someone young enough to be her son. We learn that Grahame once had an affair with a 13-year old stepson whom she later married, and both Grahame and Turner confide to having had gay relationships. Through the prism of today's sexual codes, the film could easily be judgemental but is not.Moral and emotional ambiguity casts a soft light over Grahame. It is impossible to tell when she is emoting genuinely or when she is in character, acting the hopeless romantic or ageing cougar. It is only when her health declines and she must confront mortality that we can sense the human being behind the mask. It takes a special actress to hold together this kaleidoscope of emotions and Bening does it brilliantly. Jamie Bell excels as her leading man, beguiled by the charms of an older woman.There is a self-reflexive side to depicting an icon of classic Hollywood who plays a fading star in the modern era. Bening channels several greats like Katherine Hepburn and even Humphrey Bogart to produce a brooding, mercurial woman struggling to accept that she was "once the great Gloria Grahame". In this way, the story dwells on the backstage world where the distance between actors and their roles can become blurred and chaotic. The result is an engrossing study of the demons that lay in waiting, somewhere in the space beyond stardom.