I had a craving for ‘Judy’ ever since I heard the project announced. Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland on the big screen seemed extraordinary to me. And yet, I also wondered if it would satisfy my cravings. Would it focus on the camp, would it give me the fashionista angle I craved or feature tired old costumes that made La Zellweger seem like a caricature of the great, albeit lost diva?
Well, ‘Judy’, directed by Rupert Goold, with original music by Gabriel Yared, featuring Zellweger herself singing and wearing some beautifully modern costumes by Jany Temime and wigs plus makeup by Jeremy Woodhead was everything I wanted it to be — beautiful, glamorous, sad and poignantly modern.
A still from ‘Judy’
So did anyone else who watched the film see a Weinstein like figure in the presence of Louis B. Mayer — Judy Garland’s “mentor”. I put that in quotes because Mayer himself was mean, put her down, got her addicted to drugs and touched her inappropriately. And yet didn’t differ so much in his approach from the modern maestro of the inappropriate himself. A '#MeToo moment for sure.
And then did anyone else break down at the relationship that Garland had with her fans, two of whom are actually fictional add-ins for the movie but who provide one of the most intimate, touching scenes in modern cinema? About their very presence Goold admitted, “most of the story is accurate and true. Her going back with the fans is something we’ve added, this was our fantasy of that part of her. A scene that came when we were trying to connect her to LGBT’s community and their relationship with her. It was important that we gave space to that.“
The ‘Judy’ filmmaker talked about the idea of capturing an iconic figure in the last years of their life and career. “Thing of Roger Federer,” he said during the press conference at the Rome Film Festival where I finally got to watch the film, “we don’t have many more years of watching him as a tennis player and there is something even more magical about watching him.”
About casting Zellweger he admitted, “I felt it was important it had an actress attached who was the right age,” but also, he continued, someone who possessed a “girl next door quality. She felt like your sister in some ways. Renee has always had that in her own career and there was some kind of symmetry there.” The symmetry related to the fact that, Goold explained “Renee had taken six years away from the system, she found it all very draining… She’d had her own complex relationship with fame, and I thought that would make her an interesting choice for the role.”
Had other actresses ever been considered for the role? “No, we really didn’t,” conceded Goold, admitting further that a Cate Blanchett or the likes felt more like “strong, determined women, which is not to say Judy Garland wasn’t strong but there was a fragility about her — and Renee has that butterfly quality, so I felt it was always her.” In fact, watching her inhabit the role completely, throw herself into the songs she lends her voice to, one understands just how brilliant the transition is. It is impossible for me now to imagine, to think of Judy Garland without seeing Zellweger there too. Her curved shoulders, the bones of her thin frame, her slim legs, the way she wears her costumes. She is Judy Garland — a modern, understandable version of the icon. Zellweger makes ‘Judy’ a woman, and that makes her perfect in this role.
Finally, the brilliance of the clothes lies in how Temime reinvents the cuts and translates the fabrics to make sense of them in a modern film. Just see some of the outfits from the film side by side with what Garland wore to understand how brilliant it all is. Oh, and not to be forgotten, wonderful performance by the unrecognizable Rufus Sewell who continues to be one of my favorite actors ever.
‘Judy’ has already played in American theaters but if you didn’t catch it yet, find a way to watch it. It will open in Italian theaters in January of 2020.