“Do not use the same models in two films. One would not believe them.” So the puritanical French director Robert Bresson commanded in 1975, in Notes on the Cinematograph. The order has not been obeyed. Cinema is happily organised on the opposite principle: we hardly rate a film as worth seeing unless we’re familiar with the actors already. We want to see them, never mind the parts they play.
George Clooney is one of the most recognisable and cherished of all actors currently working, a star in the classic Hollywood mode, everybody’s crush. You can’t ever mistake him: those features, that look, that voice. Jay Kelly is a character study of just such a celebrity. Noah Baumbach, its producer, director and scriptwriter, conceived it specifically for Clooney. Who else could it have been? The very name Jay Kellyis a slant rhyme for his.
A bravura one-shot opening takes us behind the scenes on set, showing how many people are involved in creating the illusion, before Kelly turns it on once more, playing a slumped gangster, uttering his last words – “I want to leave this party” – as he dies on a city street, alone apart from a dog. Kelly is such a perfectionist he always wants to do another take. The director is in awe of his star. “It’s a total honour! Thank you for trusting me!” he grovels, as Kelly exits, glad-handing the production staff: “Couldn’t do it without you!” He’s at the very acme of fame.
But what has such dedication to his career cost him? We find out alongside him as he begins a journey into his past life, using a recurrent device of the camera slipping, in a single fluid shot, out of a present scene into another room, from another time, with the older Kelly sometimes standing by – a witness to the critical junctures of his own story.
Kelly’s quest for meaning begins when he attends the funeral of the veteran director who gave him his first big break (Jim Broadbent), but whom Kelly refused to support when he was down on his luck. He bumps into an old friend, Timothy (Billy Crudup), whom he hasn’t seen for years. They go for a drink but it turns sour. Timothy, once an aspirant actor too, admits that he hates Kelly and accuses him of stealing his life. They fight.
Kelly is always surrounded by his entourage, led by his devoted manager Ron (Adam Sandler), publicist Liz (Laura Dern) and make-up artist Candy (Emily Mortimer). But he is estranged from his own family. His eldest daughter, Jessica (Riley Keough), blames him for being so focused on his career he spent no time with her. His youngest, Daisy (Grace Edwards), not much fonder of him and about to leave home, heading off for a trip round Europe.
Impulsively, Kelly sets off by private jet, surrounded by his staff, to join Daisy – uninvited – on the trip, combining it with accepting a lifetime achievement award at a film festival in Tuscany. In a truly excruciating scene, he travels on a train for the first time in years, interacting charmingly with the entire wowed carriage. Hardly less embarrassingly, he proves himself still an action hero, running after a handbag thief.
But the festival is a bust. Everybody walks out on him – his make-up artist, his publicist, his manager, even his crusty old dad (Stacy Keach), whom he’s flown in. Brokenly, Kelly tells the spectre of Jessica, as they wander in a dark wood, that he just had to give his career his all these last 35 years, even if it was at her expense. “It’s got to have meant something.” “What if it doesn’t?” she retorts. At the gala evening, we see a showreel of Kelly’s greatest hits – that is, Clooney’s – and, as the audience applauds thunderously, poor Kelly says, “Can I go again? I’d like another one.”
So, although there are other problems worth considering in the wider world just now, we have a study of the problems of being a huge film star. Baumbach is keen to stress that it applies to us all, that it’s a metaphor for the “human struggle” we all experience. “If you make a movie about an actor, you’re inherently making a movie about identity and performance,” he insists.
Up to a point, perhaps. Or it might be mainly about the actor stepping out once again. The feeling of regret about past choices – the wish you could live it all over again – is common enough, though. Basil Fawlty nailed it in six seconds: “Whoosh! What was that? That was your life, mate. Oh, that was quick. Do I get another? Sorry, mate, that’s your lot.”
“Jay Kelly” is in cinemas now and on Netflix from 5 December
[Further reading: Sydney Sweeney: the face that launched a thousand takes]
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This article appears in the 13 Nov 2025 issue of the New Statesman, What Keir won't hear