Movie Review: JT LeRoy

JT LeRoy ** ½ / ***** 

Directed by: Justin Kelly.

Written by: Justin Kelly and Savannah Knoop based on Knoop’s memoir.

Starring: Kristen Stewart (Savannah), Laura Dern (Laura), Jim Sturgess (Geoff), Diane Kruger (Eva), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Sean), James Jagger (Ben), Courtney Love (Sasha), David Lawrence Brown (Bruce), Alicia Johnston (Isabelle), Eric Plamondon (Gaspard), Craig Haas (Ennio), Adam Hurtig (Darren), Will Woytowich (Cassian), Bobby Robidoux (Elliot).

 

There is a fundamental misstep at the heart of the movie JT LeRoy, and the movie is just never able to overcome that misstep. The simple fact is that if you’re going to make a movie about the now infamous literary scandal of JT LeRoy, your main character shouldn’t be Savannah, who was the public face of the fraud, but rather it should be Laura – who is clearly the most fascinating character in the saga. She was a middle-aged woman who found success as a writer only after pretending to be a teenage boy – one who had suffered tremendous abuse and suffering and became a prostitute to survive, but was able to capture that life in such unflinching detail in his novels that they became successful – and got a lot of very famous people interested in JT LeRoy. Of course, LeRoy didn’t exist – and Laura could only keep up the ruse so long on the phone, and in writing, so eventually she needed to produce an actual JT LeRoy. That is where Savannah came in – who played LeRoy in public for a while, before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

 

Laura is clearly the person you want to get to know in this story – and casting Laura Dern in that role should have been a slam dunk. Hell, casting Kristen Stewart as the androgynous Savannah, who posed as LeRoy, should have also been a slam dunk. Eventually though, as you watch the movie you start to figure out that Savannah’s story just isn’t all that interesting – and Laura’s sideshow is really where you want to be.

 

A more generous viewer than I may note that Laura has already been the center of coverage on this whole scandal – she was the center when it broke, and was the center of the very good documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story (which blows it in the final scene, but whatever), and so spending more time with Savannah is a way to get a different aspect of the story. Maybe – I just wish that story was more interesting.

 

What we do get is another reminder of why Kristen Stewart is one of my favorite working actresses. Savannah’s story here is really rather run of the mill, but Stewart still brings her A-game anyway. Her Savannah is a confused young woman in her early 20s – she comes out to live with her brother and his older wife, and then is thrust into this strange spotlight when Laura convinces her to be the face of the scam – first just as a one off photo shoot, and then in interviews, book readings, press conferences, etc. Savannah is confused enough about who she is, without having to adopt this other persona – a persona she didn’t even invent, and is uncomfortable with. But it is exciting at the same time – and somewhat intoxicating.

 

It’s also a reminder that Diane Kruger should get meatier roles as well. Here she plays Eva – a character based on Italian actress/director Asia Argento, who they make French here. Eva loves JT’s work, and wants the films rights to one of his novels to make into a movie (that became The Heart is Deceitful Among All Things by Argento). Eva subtly – and then not so subtly – takes advantage of the naïve Savannah – and as the movie makes clear, there should have been a point when she could have stopped all of the craziness – and she just doesn’t.

 

The film ends up making Laura into kind of sad, comic figure then. Dern gives it her all – you cannot fault her performance here – but the film isn’t particularly interested in her in any real way – except as someone who keeps pushing to keep the scam going, and as an object of fun when Laura adopts her own alter-ego – Speedy, JT’s manager, with a bad British accent.

 

The film was directed by Justin Kelly, who adapted Savanah’s own memoir with her to make the film. The film just never quite gets to the heart of what this whole scandal was about – and in a way, the film knows it. They called it JT LeRoy after all, not Savannah. They knew where the true story was here – and couldn’t tell it, so they told this adjacent one instead.