(star)(star)
Lights! Camera! Deconstruction! Canadian Denys Arcand’s “Stardom” is a sometimes witty, flashy satire of media celebrity, based like the 1965 Julie Christie-John Schlesinger hit “Darling” on the meteoric career of an international supermodel.
Here, it’s ex-Cornwall teenage hockey star Tina Menzhal (Jennifer Pare), who rises and falls against a backdrop of popping flashbulbs and high-style glamor.. At the center of this hubbub is the intimidatingly gorgeous 18-year-old newcomer Pare.
Unfortunately, Arcand’s fragmented collage mockumentary style, though laced with nice digs at TV-speak, gets way too arch, labored and annoying. Almost to a man and woman, the actors playing the media people and interviewers lay on the irony with a trowel. Though this is a good cast — Dan Aykroyd and Frank Langella play two of Tina’s more unfortunate lovers — perhaps the bilingual Arcand isn’t as deft in English as he is in French. This film has so many good ideas, it tends to seem better after you’ve left the theater. But the mock TV stuff is just too faux to be funny.
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“Stardom” opens Friday. Running time: 1:40. MPAA rating: R (language and sexual content).
