‘FAYE’ Review: Laurent Bouzereau Finds Morsels of Truth in one of Hollywood’s Most Venerable and Vilified Stars | Cannes

Premiering in the Cannes Classics section of the fest’s 77th edition, FAYE, Laurent Bouzereau’s documentary on Hollywood icon Faye Dunaway, is very much the standard-issue biography one would expect. You get your film excerpts, archival interviews and a chorus of former costars, film scholars and journalists-turned-biographers singing the grand dame’s praises. No new ground is ventured. Had it not made an explicit point of Dunaway being chosen as the face of the 2011 Festival de Cannes, the film may very well have premiered at the Tribeca Festival where it’s more typical of the selections. 

FAYE isn’t entirely without juicy gossip fodder, though. The intensely private actress does let her guard down to discuss her difficult on-set reputation, the lifelong ramifications of a rootless childhood and private struggles with alcoholism and mental illness. There are a few revelations not in her Wikipedia entry. In that sense, the film is superior to the average uncritical puff-piece celeb docs that streaming platforms have been churning out of late.  

“Faye is perhaps someone that I have created,” the actress allows. “It’s a persona that is related very much to my work, that’s specific to my career. That’s the actress, I suppose.”  

Before she became fully realized through drive, determination and style, there was Dorothy Faye, a Southern belle from Bascom, Fla., who was a cheerleader and beauty contestant. Her father was an alcoholic, which prompted her mother to send a letter to the war department asking for him to be drafted.  

The family moved frequently during the actress’s formative years, whenever dad got reassigned to a different military base. This, she speculates, is the reason most of her interpersonal relationships have been fleeting. Well, that and the fact that Marcello Mastroianni, with whom she carried on a two-year affair, would not divorce his wife due to his Catholicism. 

Of course, the documentary dutifully rolls the highlight reel of Dunaway’s storied career, starting with her early days acting in Lincoln Center Repertory Company under the stewardship of Elia Kazan. She famously starred in such classics as Bonnie and Clyde, Network, Chinatown and The Thomas Crown Affair. Film historians pontificate about how the moral ambiguity in these films resonated so well because they echoed the cultural shifts, turbulent politics and national moods at the times of their releases, particularly the women’s movement and the dissolutions of old Hollywood and the Hays Code.  

Somewhat unexpectedly, Bouzereau does not shy away from the warts. The clip of Bette Davis telling Johnny Carson that Dunaway was the worst person she ever had to work with is included. Her reputation hasn’t always been entirely her fault, of course, such as the time that Roman Polanski plucked a stray hair from her head while filming Chinatown, something undoubtedly off-limits half a century later.  

Then there’s Mommie Dearest, a disaster for which this documentary holds the director Frank Perry solely responsible, all the while revisionistically recasting it as a cult favorite and stock repertoire for drag queens. Dunaway also tried and failed to direct a film adaptation of the play “Master Class” apparently because it went over budget.    

Her career suffered a downturn that the featured scholars casually dismiss as Hollywood ageism. She unimpressively pivoted to television, a move the commentators try to spin as ahead of the times. She was fired by the Broadway-bound play “Tea at Five” in 2019 for slapping a stagehand, yet the documentary remains coy about the true reason. Of course, that’s just as abusive and unacceptable today as what Polanski did in 1974, not to mention Dunaway herself having Chinatown co-star Jack Nicholson actually slap her in the film’s most famous confrontational scene, which might why the film knowingly deflects it.

Where Bouzereau veers off the Wikipedia entry is in the exploration of Dunaway’s bipolar personality disorder and 15 years in Alcoholics Anonymous, which the actress and her son, Liam Dunaway O’Neill, speak quite candidly about. He asks, “If she wasn’t in so much pain, would she have been that good?” Which is the nicest possible way to euphemize the dysfunction. Bouzereau, who has made a career of writing, directing and producing behind-the-scenes vignettes possibly used as bonus features in home entertainment releases or electronic press kits, has assembled a respectable and polished documentary. Incidentally, he happens to have created making-of material on Chinatown, Mommie Dearest and Network, among hundreds of others, so he wasn’t exactly starting from scratch. That does raise the question of objectivity, especially when he doesn’t provide full disclosure.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. FAYE will debut on HBO and will be available to stream on Max later this year.