Maps to the Stars

David Cronenberg follows up his career low point Cosmopolis (2012) with another picture that explores the out-of-control narcissism and vacuous banality of the American elite. Thankfully, with Maps to the Stars Cronenberg brings a sense of humor to the proceedings. The genre that best describes this jumble of narrative threads is black comedy.  The script comes from the playfully twisted mind of Bruce Wagner, an acerbic chronicler of Los Angeles weirdness (films like Young Lust and Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, and TV series like Wild Palms and The People Next Door).  

Maps to the Stars tells the intertwined stories of several damaged LA characters. First and foremost, there's Mia Wasikowska’s Agatha, a mysterious young woman who travels to Hollywood in the hope of reconnecting with her past. Agatha is a burn victim (just in case we might have feared Cronenberg had abandoned his predilection for body dimorphia in his later pictures).  Evan Bird’s Benjie is a teenage mega-star in the Zac Efron /Justin Bebier mold. Benjie needs to kick his drug habit in order to make the next film in his teen movie franchise. His parents, basket-case Cristina (Olivia Williams) and self-obsessed Stafford (John Cusack), are ambitious and controlling managers of their son’s career.  Cosmopolis star Robert Paterson pops up, though this time he drives a limo instead of just riding in one. Last but not least there’s Julianne Moore, playing an aging actress desperately trying to land the lead role in a remake of a film her movie-star mother famously played in before her untimely death.

That’s a fun cast of characters and talented actors (Moore won Best Actress at Cannes for her role). Wagner gives them all some scathing lines to deliver and some hilariously toxic scenes to play. But the film is a muddle of styles, storylines, and thematic ideas that adds up to far less than the sum of its parts. The setting, the references to (and appearances by) actual celebrities, and the occasional surreal elements all remind us that we could be watching any number of vastly superior cinematic insider commentaries on Hollywood’s near-criminal shallowness. Therefore I say skip Maps To The Stars and go revisit John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust (1975), Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), or David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001).