All that Hollywood allows

Annette Bening does Gloria Grahame justice in May-December romance biopic

As if commissioned by Turner Classic Movies itself in a paean cued up for its core demographic, “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” is a biopic by way of Douglas Sirk melodrama.

Gorgeously captured in a luminous gloss, this provocative real-life story about actress Gloria Grahame ends up following a fairly conventional path, swinging from passionate desire to volatile confrontations. But Annette Bening anchors the film by fully immersing herself in the fragile insecurities of this aging ingénue.

Gloria Grahame was a starlet in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Known primarily for noirs, she won an Academy Award for her supporting turn in 1952’s “The Bad and the Beautiful.” Sooner state residents may recognize her from her last major screen role as Ado Annie Carnes in 1955’s “Oklahoma!”—but she’s probably best remembered as Violet, the sultry blonde of Bedford Falls, in 1946’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Her life, however—which included four failed marriages and one child from each—was a tumultuous one. “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” focuses on her final years, before she passed away in 1981 at the age of 57. To the very end, Grahame’s life was defined by high drama, including her notorious romance with a man thirty years her junior.

Peter Turner was a struggling young actor in Liverpool when he met Grahame (depicted here in a sensually-charged, meet-cute disco dance). With finely-tuned seductive skills, Grahame beguiles Turner. Her allure is subtle yet potent, but Turner is no lusting dupe; his attraction is sincere, as is hers, and their love genuinely grows.

Inevitably, however, she’s simply too much for Turner to handle. Like many of her peers past their primes and in denial, Grahame still clung to the need for vain affirmations about her beauty and her bygone youth, determined to defy the wear of time and ravages of illness. These desperate delusions made her damaged goods.

Bening, who can turn any role into a showcase, humanizes this tortured self-image while also transforming her own natural baritone into Grahame’s higher cutesy vocal register. The film’s script, based on Turner’s memoir, reduces her broken psychology to surface levels. Bening makes them heartbreaking. Jamie Bell also renders Turner’s maturation with real conviction and grace (as in a scene the two share onstage in an empty theater).

More artful than candid—even blue collar locales and seaside shacks look lush—“Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” may not be entirely gripping, but it’s still effective as poignant nostalgia.