Seberg: Ultra-Glossy Biopic Tells Intense Story Superficially

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B-

As much a showcase for Kristen Stewart and the fabulous frocks of the 1960s as a glimpse at a very low moment in U.S. governmental history, Seberg is an entertaining if simplistic drama that would have benefited from more grit and less gloss.

That’s especially true when you stop to think about the story this film is telling — that the FBI deliberately ruined an innocent woman’s life in pursuit of a racist agenda.

The film opens in May 1968 in Paris as Seberg — the American-born actress who became the darling of the French New Wave after starring in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless in 1960 — is returning to Los Angeles, leaving behind her second husband, the French novelist Romain Gary (Yvan Attal), and her son.

On board the plane heading west, Seberg encounters another passenger, Hakim Jamal, an electrifying activist and member of the Black Panther Party, who is loudly advocating for a seating upgrade for another passenger, Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X.

The brief encounter with the charismatic Jamal ignites Seberg’s radicalism. We already know she wants to do meaningful work; she just told her agent seatmate that exact thing as she turned down a script for a marquee movie. After touch-down, Seberg spontaneously joins the Black Panthers on the tarmac for a photo-op. The FBI observes.

Indeed, the Black Panthers are very much in the crosshairs of an FBI counter-intelligence program that has enormous reach. Seberg, the Feds later learn, quickly becomes complicit, making donations to the Party and, more damagingly for her, having a brief affair with Jamal. So begins Seberg’s deep dive into politics… and the end of her life as anything she can meaningfully control or safeguard.

The FBI opts to defame Seberg to discredit the Black Panthers. Nefarious methods include (but are not limited to) intensive surveillance, phone bugging, and planting false rumours in the press to inflame the nation’s racism by suggesting Seberg is pregnant with Jamal’s baby.

As the FBI escalates the campaign of government-sanctioned harassment against Seberg, she slowly falls apart, albeit against a sparkling backdrop of California sunshine until October 1969 by which time she is in New York washing down pills with tumblers of booze.

Stewart is well-cast as Seberg, her twitchy, doe-eyed demeanour persuasively conveying the anatomy of a breakdown. Indeed, everyone is well cast: Anthony Mackie and Zazie Beetz as Hakim and Dorothy Jamal are palpably righteous, and Vince Vaughn scans believably as the bad-seed FBI agent to Jack O'Connell’s increasingly sympathetic one.

There are also some striking moments from first-time filmmaker Benedict Andrews. In an early scene, as the agents played by Vaughn and O'Connell are staking out Jamal’s Compton crib, two beautiful young women approach and innocently apply lipstick in the reflection of the van’s opaque windows, unaware that the enemy is within and watching. It’s at once beautiful and unnerving and perfectly illustrates the subterfuge that was (is?) the FBI’s calling card.

And the FBI’s relentless, exhaustive surveillance is powerfully documented but as it continues, Seberg’s apparent naivete and inability to adequately size up her opponent feels exasperating. That the film fails to dive deeper into why that should be is a missed opportunity. We get lots of thousand-yard stares but precious little back story except for the odd throwaway slip of dialog (“It’s not Preminger…,” “I’ve been trying to get away from that girl [Seberg herself] my whole life…”).

The movie’s high sheen, presumably intended to capture the zeitgeist and colour of the era, feels at odds with the story and underscores the lack of depth into why an elfin, big-in-France actress like Jean Seberg struck the FBI as a monumental threat worth destroying.

Seberg. Directed by Benedict Andrews. Starring Kristen Stewart, Vince Vaughn, Jack O'Connell, Yvan Attal, Colm Meaney, Anthony Mackie and Zazie Beetz. Opens February 28 at Toronto’s Carlton Cinema, March 6 at Calgary’s Globe Cinema, March 27 at Ottawa’s ByTowne Cinema with more cities to be added in the coming weeks.