This is a slapdash, disingenuous, occasionally weird and ultimately unsatisfying portrait of Faye Dunaway. It is also, quite conspicuously, a partisan attempt to rehabilitate her reputation, which has suffered more than a few blows over the years. But if you're going to include that clip of Bette Davis telling Johnny Carson that Faye is the only actor in Hollywood she'd never work with again, then you really need to properly address the accusations of divadom at a monster level, to which this doco only fleetingly alludes. Faye's cover-all response to stories about her being difficult is that - news flash - she's bi-polar. Since this has never been mentioned before, it would seem to be a very late-life diagnosis, and Faye is curiously vague on the details. Nevertheless, she deploys being bi-polar like a get-out-of-jail-free card, as a means of not addressing or dismissing all those allegations of being difficult, unprofessional, unreasonable and infuriating. But since it's that behaviour that pretty much de-railed her career, this just leaves a giant hole in the story of her life. For this film to really change perceptions about Dunaway, it needed to delve deeper and demand a bit more of Faye. Okay, so she behaved badly because she was off-kilter; but how does she feel about that - about the consequences for her, and about the impact it had on others? It also has to be said that it's a strange and motley selection of friends and colleagues who have been curated to talk on Faye's behalf. There's Rutanya Alda, who has previously dished for anyone who asked about Faye in diva mode on Mommie Dearest. There's the always annoying Columbia film professor Annette Insdorf, who is as emphatic as she is vacuous. There are a few actors and studio execs you've never heard of. And Sharon Stone, who at least has some insight into what happens to actresses in Hollywood beyond 40. Other than Sharon, there's not much in the way of insight and illumination. At best, Faye is a reminder of what a magnetic and compelling actor Dunaway was in her prime. But the picture quickly goes blurry once we get into the What-happened-Faye? Years, post Network. In the end, we can only hope some future documentarian dares to tackle The Legend of Faye Dunaway with a clearer vision and significantly more guts.
