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That's the point Denys Arcand beats into your brain with a sledgehammer in "Stardom," the story of a Canadian girl's meteoric rise to celebrity and her just as sudden descent.
The French-Canadian writer-director shows little subtlety in his satire of the modeling biz. While the film's structure is creative, it also gets annoying quickly.
Tina Marzhal (newcomer Jessica Pare, whose versatile looks are reminiscent of Liv Tyler) is a hockey player at a small-town vocational college. When a feature about her airs on a local television show, it doesn't take long for photographers and modeling agencies to spot her beauty.
Tina is whisked away to Montreal, then to Paris and New York, where she lives the fast-paced life of a supermodel. One minute she's an unknown, quietly headed to hockey practice, the next she's chain-smoking and throwing tantrums at photo shoots. The pace is so rushed, if you blink you'll miss a major development.
Many older men fall for her, or at least the image of her, including the French photographer who takes her first pictures (Charles Berling), a restaurant owner (a poorly cast Dan Aykroyd) and a New York Rangers hockey player. At the height of her fame, she marries the Canadian ambassador to the United Nations (Frank Langella), simply because she thinks she's supposed to.
But all these men find that Tina is human, and life with her isn't as idyllic as they'd dreamed.
Arcand shows Tina through the eyes of the television cameras that follow her everywhere. Invariably, the reporters who interview her are shrill and over-the-top. A running gag, which isn't funny even the first time, is that whenever Tina starts to answer questions, TV reporters cut her off mid-sentence to inject their own insipid, perky banter.
We never get to know Tina, even though she is everywhere. And that's the point: She's not so much a person as an idea.
The only one who tries to find the real Tina is avant-garde film director Bruce Taylor (real-life stage director Robert Lepage) who is shooting a documentary about her. He follows her with his camera, filming her in black and white, and his photography (rather, Arcand's photography through this character's eyes) is rich and insightful.
"Stardom" only gets interesting toward the end, when Tina's star begins to fade, Taylor stays with her and the tone shifts from frenetic to introspective.
Ultimately, the film is as shallow as the modeling world it depicts. Arcand is saying something loud and clear about the superficiality of fame, but it's not exactly groundbreaking.
"Stardom," a Lions Gate Films release, is in English and French with English subtitles. It was shown this year at the Toronto International Film Festival and at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is rated R for language and sexual content. Running time: 103 minutes.
(This film is rated R)