Main Cast: Jessica Paré, Dan Aykroyd, Charles Berling, Thomas Gibson, Frank Langella
Release Year: 2000
Country: FR/CA
Run Time: 100 minutes
Plot
French Canadian director Denys Arcand pushes the boundaries of the mockumentary with Stardom, the tale of a fictional neophyte supermodel (Jessica Pare) told entirely through clips of her appearances on talk shows, television interviews, and documentaries. Originally titled 15 Moments, Stardom begins its portrait at a women's hockey game in the nether regions of Ontario, Canada. When the team's formidable teenage forward Tina (Pare) pulls her helmet off, letting her brunette tresses fly, a bystander snaps a photo, and Tina soon becomes the buzz at the country's hottest fashion houses. Her rise through the industry, however, is plagued by advances from older men with sundry motives: a smitten French photographer (Charles Berling), a smarmy entrepreneur (Dan Aykroyd), the Canadian Ambassador to the U.N. (Frank Langella), and a slick promoter (Thomas Gibson, the latter half of TV's Dharma and Greg). Stardom was the closing film at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, marking the first time in over 50 years that a Canadian production was chosen for such an honor; it would go on to open the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival before its theatrical premiere. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Review
More restrained, yet more caustic than the popular mockumentaries of Christopher Guest, the innovative Stardom risks flying over unsuspecting audiences' heads with its dry humor and barbed media criticism. Yet for all its vitriol and comic restraint, the film still manages to entertain and provoke. By co-opting the formal elements of infotainment, renegade writer/director Denys Arcand and cinematographer Guy Dufaux give their film an immediately recognizable visual rhythm; from gaudy talk-show debacles to steadicam sequences that recall the most annoying moments on MTV's The Real World and House of Style, Stardom's disparate formats all seem instantly familiar. How many celebrities' lives have we seen played out in just these sorts of tacky forums? As the time line accelerates and nouveau supermodel Tina Menzhal moves inexorably from obscurity to the A-list to pop culture's trash heap, the film achieves a sort of temporal poetry. Like a Behind the Music episode without the intrusive voice-over, Stardom dissects the cycle of celebrity build-up and decay with perfect acuity. The inverse of the loquacious hit man protagonist from the similarly themed Man Bites Dog, Tina is at once hopelessly omnipresent and utterly inarticulate -- a human being glorified in image but reduced to mute ubiquity. And because she's not a real celebrity, burdened with meaning, we're free to empathize with the indignity of it all. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
"There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol."
- Joseph Addison
"He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star."
- William Blake
"You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi."
- Humphrey Bogart
"No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard."
- Robert Frost
"God makes stars. I just produce them."
- Samuel Goldwyn
"Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene."
- Ben Hecht
Stardom is a 2000 Canadian film written by J.Jacob Potashnik & Denys Arcand and directed by Denys Arcand and starring Jessica Paré and Dan Aykroyd. It tells the story of a young girl who tries to cope with her rise to stardom after being discovered by a fashion agency. The film was screened out of competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.[1]
Other titles:
15 Moments (Canada: English title)
Stardom (France)
Stardom - Le culte de la célébrité (Canada: French title)
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