We find out next Tuesday whether Jessica Chastain is in the running for a Best Actress Oscar. And I’ll be gutted if she isn’t. As Tammy Faye Bakker (a hard-scrabble bomb-shell turned super-wealthy 80s televangelist-turned national joke) Chastain is fabulously watchable and every bit as bewitching as Lady Gaga in House of Gucci.
Her Tammy Faye is a calculating and libidinous innocent, a walking paradox whose big hair and notoriously lash-tastic eyes never overshadow her brain. That we believe in this character as a restless college girl, a cajoling young wife, a chirpy singer, an unconventional preacher, a cultural pioneer and, finally, a painfully gutsy fifty-something survivor demonstrates the range of an actress whose best work, of late, has been for TV (see Scenes from a Marriage).
The 44-year-old was sinfully dull in the last movie she appeared in, which she also co-produced (The 355). As a shot at redemption, this kitschy-sink biopic has significant flaws (a claim of rape is downplayed; the ending’s a whitewash). On the whole, though, it’s just the ticket.
Almost every US review has found fault with the plot (the word “plodding” crops up a lot). I wonder if that’s because these critics are so familiar with the story of Tammy and her crooked husband, Jim (Andrew Garfield), who together hosted a TV show which, at one time, had over 20m viewers. If all you know about the “Ken and Barbie of televangelism” is that they were engulfed in financial scandal, then a mid-film revelation about Jim offers the perfect curveball. Also surprising: Tammy’s insistence on using the show to publicise “penile pumps”.
Garfield (far more stretched, here, than he was in Tick, Tick... Boom!) milks every situation for discomforting laughs. Jim’s self-pity knows no bounds; he’s moved to tears by the fact that fleecing his and Tammy’s followers is both high risk and time-consuming. And he’s the king of pass-agg. In a wickedly funny scene, he comes to the hospital, where Tammy has just given birth to their second child, and registers the intimacy between Tammy and handsome music producer, Gary (Mark Wystrach). As Gary offers his congratulations, Jim smiles and croons, “We’re blessed, blessed.” His eyes, though, say: Gary, my friend, I’d like to nail you to a cross.
Later, Jim wails that Tammy is “a bottomless pit” with a “whiny, grating, Betty Boop voice”. Like House of Gucci and Being The Ricardos, this movie charts the rise and fall of a partnership that merged the personal and professional. Couples who yearn to nurture each other’s dreams and spend every waking moment together are advised to give it a wide berth. Everyone else? Buckle up, it’s quite the ride.
