The Story of Jean Seberg: Watch the Woman Fall

Deep down, who was Jean Seberg? An actress who has become the emblem of the New Wave thanks to a t-shirt from the Herald Tribune and a mythical close-up in Breathless (what is disgusting?“,”text”:”what is disgusting?”}”> what is disgusting? she asked, right in the public eye)?

A committed, die-hard artist, married to Roman Garry? A young woman who entered the cinema in a wildly traumatic way (at 17, she was chosen to be Otto Preminger’s Joan of Arc and was seriously burned during the shooting of the scene at the stake)? A free and modern lover? A bewildered mother (she will organize the burial of her daughter – who died a few days after her birth – in a glass coffin to prove her whiteness…)? An unhappy wife?

A little of all that, of course, but Jean Seberg’s story (Seberg), directed by Australian Benedict Andrews, does not necessarily seek to solve the mystery. Too unfathomable, probably.

No, the film focuses on a particular, decisive moment in the life of the actress. In 1968, back in the United States for filming, she began an affair with Hakim Jamal, an activist of the Black Panthers (then alive, after the assassination of Malcolm X).

Considering her therefore dangerous – a famous, white actress supporting the civil rights movement? The risk of contagion is too great – the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the ultimate representative of the country’s conservative tendencies, wiretap her. Then begins for her a descent into hell, made of paranoia, alcohol and pills taken by handfuls.



The Story of Jean Seberg, by Dominic Andrews Photo: Amazon Studios

In himself, Jean Seberg’s story may not be the kind of film that will go down in history. Conventional staging; dripping music; costumes and sets almost too slick to really capture the politico-artistic ferment of the United States of the late 60s; story turning several corners… the coating is not quite there.

Yet the film holds, thanks to the slender and vulnerable presence of Kristen Stewart, emblem of these women too indomitable for a world that condemns them to motherhood or to the status of a beautiful object. Yesterday like today.

The blond and short hair giving her the look of a young bird fallen from the nest, while contrasting with the virulence of the sociopolitical commitments of Seberg (sincere, certainly, but misunderstood), the actress delivers here a performance whose reliefs astonish. Watching her thus transform a young woman in full possession of her faculties and her seduction into a poor thing completely disoriented, haunted, self-destructive, we understand why, years later, she will be so striking in the role of Lady Di in the film. spencerby Pablo Larrain.

Former teen star Kristen Stewart is unparalleled in diving into vulnerabilities and making them heartbreaking. And Jean Seberg, with such a tragic destiny, was the dream character for her to show it, once again.

The trailer (source: Vimeo)

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The Story of Jean Seberg: Watch the Woman Fall