George Clooney in real life probably isn’t all that much like Jay Kelly, the 60-something movie star he plays in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly. For starters, he doesn’t have grown children he’s been neglecting for most of their lives, and he came up in the business in somewhat different fashion, through bit parts and TV work. But the role and the movie around it feel designed for Clooney anyway, not just in terms of his looks and his age but also in terms of how he seems to move through life, with a no-big-deal half-smile always across his face. The movie has absorbed its actor’s vibe. It looks great, and it ambles along pleasantly, rarely veering too far into the dramatic or the emotional; moments of tension or insight are often defused with a laugh or some other odd narrative distraction. But by the end, it gets you anyway.
The loose plot feels like a travelogue of sorts. When he finds out his college-bound daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), intends to spend the last two weeks of summer traveling to France and Italy with her friends instead of at home with him, Jay decides at the last minute to follow her to Europe. He’s feeling the cold clammy hand of mortality on his shoulder after the death of Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the director who first discovered him. And besides, a lifetime-achievement award being presented to him in Tuscany makes for a good excuse. Along with Jay comes an entourage of attendants, among them his manager, Ron Sukenick (Adam Sandler); his publicist, Liz (Laura Dern); and his hair and makeup person, Phoebe (Emily Mortimer, who co-wrote the script with Baumbach).
Of these, Ron is the one closest to Jay, and he’s clearly done everything in his power to help his biggest client rise in the industry and stay there. Those expecting a big alpha-dog performance from Sandler might not be ready for just how much he admirably underplays the role. Ron has relatively little personality because he’s allowed himself to be subsumed by Jay. “You’re Jay Kelly, but I’m Jay Kelly, too,” he tells Jay, but it’s clear that the actor doesn’t see it the same way. Ron betrays little emotion, in part because he’s just so damn busy; his poker-faced, can-do competence is clearly his greatest asset. He’s a constant fount of reassurance and behind-the-scenes control, and he never seems to rest.
When we first see Ron, he’s on set with Jay but on the phone with his daughter, trying to quell her anxiety before a big tennis match. When next we see Ron, he’s on the tennis court with his daughter but on the phone with Liz, trying to manage whatever new crisis Jay has gotten himself into. Ron is a man trying to live two lives, FaceTiming bedtime stories to his 5-year-old son while jetting around the world with his high-powered client — a situation that seems like a mess until we realize that Jay has avoided this very trap by managing to live no life at all.
As the journey takes them from private jets across the Atlantic to four-car motorcades that wind their way through Paris at dawn to a crowded economy-class train cabin to night-sprints through the Italian countryside, Jay finds himself looking over his memories, wondering where he lost touch with the people around him. He remembers a distant conversation with his oldest daughter, Jessica (Riley Keough), when she tried to confront him about the fact that he was never there for her. He remembers an actress he once fell for, even though they never really did anything about it. He remembers the audition that got him his first big break. That break, we learn, came at the expense of his old friend and acting-class partner Timothy, played in the present by Billy Crudup, who briefly swoops into this film full of actors giving amazing performances and somehow steals the whole thing right out from under everybody.
This is a very familiar setup, with elements that remind one of everything from Birdman (2014) to La Grazia, the Paolo Sorrentino picture about a sheltered Italian president that just opened this very same Venice Film Festival. (Netflix is releasing Jay Kelly in theaters November 14.) But what distinguishes Jay Kelly is also what drives Jay Kelly: the Teflon charisma of Clooney himself. Almost none of the incidents and memories that cut into Jay’s sense of self are dramatic or sensational in their own right. He’s not a neglectful monster. He clearly loves his kids. He means well. He wants the people around him to have their own lives. The cross-section of ordinary citizens who wind up in the same train car with him clearly adore him, and he’s very outgoing and pleasant with everybody, even heroic at times. Jay is a good guy! He likes being liked. So the possibility that at the end of it all he might have robbed the people around him of their own lives is a powerful notion we ourselves might find as hard to accept as he does; Clooney plays it all so cool that he and the movie both sneak up on us. This is the role of a lifetime, on many levels. And he delivers the performance of a lifetime.
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