Elaine Stritch:
Shoot Me, GFT, today, 6.30pm
"I've got a certain amount of fame. I've got money. I wish I could f***in' drive; then I'd really be a menace!" The opening gambit in Chiemi Karasawa's documentary is the perfect beginning to this film portrait of one of America's most extraordinary stars of stage and screen.
Intimate, respectful and as honest as the ever-candid Elaine Stritch herself, the film follows the performer, aged 86, as she prepares her latest one-woman show 'Singin' Sondheim Again - Why Not?' Battling diabetes and a history of alcoholism, Stritch finds that the drive to perform outweighs every impediment.
There are windows onto the actress's irascibility and narcissism; in one particularly delicious scene, as she unpacks some muffins, she takes over the directing of the documentary. But there are also touching insights into her vulnerabilities, struggles and losses.
One loss is her vocal range, another is her ability to remember lyrics. A disastrous combination for a woman embarking on a show constituted of songs, one might have thought. That is to reckon without Stritch's magnetic stage presence, her tremendous capacity for self-deprecating humour and her audience's love of an undoubted grande dame of show business.
Mark Brown
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