Maps to the Stars

David Cronenberg's savage satire of Hollywood mores serves up a coolly analytical dissection of mad desperation among the Beverly Hills set, focusing on two celebrities, one a precocious child actor and the other an actress who fears encroaching middle age. Benjie (Evan Bird) is a 13-year-old kid who is making a sequel to a smash comedy following a stint in rehab, and Havana (Julianne Moore) is an actress anxious to land a role in a remake of a film that originally starred her mother—a legendary beauty who tragically died in a fire. Linking the pair is Benjie's sister, Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), who returns after spending years in an institution—physically scarred from a fire—and is hired as Havana's assistant. Others drawn into the central characters' web include Benjie's parents, and a limo driver (Robert Pattinson) who wants to act. All are broken people, whose interconnections grow increasingly destructive. Cronenberg oversees everything with a typically detached and clinical eye, and ultimately each viewer will have to decide whether his cold, scientific approach to this cynical portrait of moviedom works. But love it or hate it, Maps to the Stars is clearly the work of a filmmaker with a unique vision and a distinctive style. Recommended. (F. Swietek)