FILM
D’Onofrio) and Pat Robertson
(Gabriel Olds), mimics the
freeze-frames of a Scorsese
crime pic: Godfellas.
The story instead focuses
on Tammy Faye’s dubious
protestations of innocence, a
shaky decision that leaches
the film of much dramatic
interest. It’s second half feels
wan with victimhood. Stuck at
home with a baby while Jim
hogs the spotlight, forced into
humiliating on-air apologies
when she has an affair,
Tammy becomes that all too
familiar figure from biopic-
land: the martyr, a diva-victim
guzzling down Ativan with
Diet Coke while her husband
cheats with men and women.
We’ve seen it all before.
The self-pity is an awkward
ask for Chastain, who thrills at
the far harder task of finding
humanity, not in the suffering
of Tammy Faye, but in her
blithe bubble-headedness.
Never doubt the self-deceiving
chicanery behind it.
Chastain is the kind of
actress who will never
get called “America’s
sweetheart”. She’s a merciless
taxonomist of feminine wile
and guile, from her Salomé inHymn of the Republic through
her tears; she calls Falwell
“Jerry” instead of “Reverend
Falwell”, and defies his
fulminations against
homosexuals to interview a
gay Christian pastor (Randy
Havens) at the height of the
Aids epidemic. It’s Chastain’s
movie. This flamboyant fake
brings her every acting
instinct fully awake.
When set beside her,
Garfield’s Jim Bakker pales
somewhat. Giggling his way
through the first half, he
whines his way through the
second (“Tam, I’ve been
had!”), and while I’m sure
most of this was intentional,
Garfield’s reedy Englishness,
even padded out with
prosthetics, seems a poor fit
for the chubby, all-you-can-eat
buffet of Jim Bakker’s
appetites — he pecks where
Bakker gorged. You look at
him and Chastain together
and think: she would eat him
for breakfast.
Bailey and Barbato’s
documentary is still your best
bet if you want to understand
the story fully, and features
the immortal scene in which
Jim, on air, announces, “Now
Tammy’s going to sing for us,”
only to find Tammy, blitzed
on drugs, gazing at a prop wall
and saying: “I’m looking at
this boat.” There’s no getting
beyond the freak-show
theatrics in Showalter’s
version of the story. What
you see is all you get.
I didn’t love Joanna Hogg’s
The Souvenir Part II,
which is more than a little
heartbreaking because I
adored the first film, a sliver
of autobiographical film-
making about Hogg’s amour
fou with an aristocratic heroin
addict in the early Eighties,
which glittered so brightly you
barely noticed how deeply it
cut. It just went straight in.
The follow-up film finds
her on-screen alter ego, Julie
Harte (Honor Swinton Byrne),
at film school in London,
trying to process her
heartbreak by making a film
about it. Julie’s aesthetic
risk-taking seems to be a
poor substitute for the
intensity of her affair with
Anthony: Tom Burke’s
haughty, depraved aristo is
much missed here. Too much
time is spent mourning the
charisma of the figure who
pinned us to our seats in the
first film. We all need help
getting over Anthony. cTHE
CRITICSFancy cars, fur
coats — and Jesus
Lipstick tattooed on, tan the
colour of a basted turkey,
eyelashes so clagged with
mascara it’s a miracle she can
prise them open, Jessica
Chastain presents the
televangelist Tammy Faye as
an inflatable doll of grotesque,
martyred femininity in
Michael Showalter’s The
Eyes of Tammy Faye. It’s
about the rise and fall of Jim
and Tammy Faye Bakker, the
televangelist couple brought
down in 1989 with multiple
counts of fraud. Most of the
fun in the movie is in the rise,
not the fall, and most of the
rise is caught best in
Chastain’s helium-bubble
performance. “What you see
is all you get,” she says
brightly, and that merciless
“all” — in place of “what”
— tells you all you need to
know. There’s nothing else to
her. With her chirpy, aw-
shucks manner, and
encomiums to love and God
(“I hurt when people hurt”),
Chastain’s Faye is a sweet pea
through and through. She’s
like one of Roy Lichtenstein’s
pop art Second World War
pin-ups blown up so large you
can see the dots.
We begin, appropriately
enough, in shame. Barred
from attending church in a
small Minnesota town
because of her parents’
infidelities, the young Tammy
Faye presses her nose against
the window, dreaming of the
salvation that awaits her
within. Attending Bible
college in Minneapolis, she is
rapt when one of her fellow
students, the pompadoured,
chubby-cheeked Jim (Andrew
Garfield) preaches the gospel
of prosperity. What’s so
blessed about the
poor? “Don’t seem
so blessed to me,”
Jim says with a
giggle, a folksy
charlatan quoting
Scripture passages
(“It’s a thing we do”)
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Michael Showalter, 12A, 126 min
HHH
The Souvenir Part II
Joanna Hogg, 15, 107 min
HHH
TOM
SHONE
Jessica Chastain is a helium bubble of martyred femininity
playing the disgraced televangelist Tammy Faye BakkerALSO RELEASED
Belle
In cinemas
12A, 121min HHHHA visual feast — even for
those who aren’t anime
fans. The accomplished
director Mamoru Hosoda
tells the story of an insecure
teenage girl who becomes
a star in a world of online
virtual reality. Combining
science fiction, teenage
angst and Beauty and the
Beast, it’s exhaustingly
overwrought — but it does
take a refreshingly balanced
view of the internet’s effect
on society.Edward PorterBeyond belief Jessica
Chastain as Tammy Fayewhile getting hand jobs in the
bath. They are expelled —
“Didja know there was a rule
against marrying?” Tammy
asks — and hit the road as
travelling preachers with a
glove puppet act that soon
catches the eye of the
Christian Broadcasting
Network, which hires them to
do a children’s show. Who
says faith can’t keep you in
fancy cars, fur coats and gold
shower heads? Let’s make a
deal with Jesus!
Adapted by the writer Abe
Sylvia from Fenton Bailey
and Randy Barbato’s 2000
documentary of the same
name, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
doesn’t delve too deeply into
the actual crimes that brought
the couple down — Jim
Bakker’s embezzlement is
presented through
flashing newspaper
headlines and TV
clips — although the
shot of a row of
televangelists
entering the room,
including Jerry
Falwell (VincentPacino’s version of Wilde’s
play to her card-shark madam
in Aaron Sorkin’s underrated
Molly’s Game. Here she gives
us another raptor to set
beside the collection — she’s
Sarah Palin with blood-red
nail extensions. She does
hand puppets in a Porky Pig
bath cap and sings the Battle14 6 February 2022