Jackie (15)

three stars

Dir: Pablo Larraín

With: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig

Runtime: 100 minutes

NEVER mind the title; one look at the posters for Pablo Larrain’s biopic shouts forth its subject. Red Dior suit (the pink Chanel comes later), immaculately bobbed hair, a string of pearls and an air of fragility - it can only be Jackie Kennedy, a woman who would change surnames throughout her life but who would forever be known as just Jackie.

Larrain’s picture is a curious but engaging affair. Though based on a true story, it comes across as the stuff of pure fantasy. The Kennedys had that effect on everything they touched. After JFK himself, no Kennedy exerts a stronger pull on our fascination than the woman who was widowed at 34. Hers was a life played out before the cameras, almost every move captured for posterity, but she remained a mystery to most.

The actor given the task of turning the many images of Kennedy into a walking, talking, believable woman is Natalie Portman. When we meet her, Kennedy is answering the door to a reporter she has summoned to her home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Her aim: to set down her vision of JFK’s presidency as a kind of Camelot, the mythical kingdom conjured up by Lerner and Loewe for their musical about the court of King Arthur ("Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot”).

What is extraordinary is not just that this long, one to one interview took place between the First Lady and a journalist, Theodore H White of Life magazine, but that it did so a week after the assassination. Most people would have struggled to function at such a time, far less try to shape a first draft of history.

Larrain, the Chilean director of the acclaimed dramas No and Tony Manero, uses the Life interview as his starting point. From here, the story spins off in several directions taking in that terrible day in Dallas, the arrangements for the funeral, and Mrs Kennedy’s time as First Lady when she made a documentary about her redecoration of the White House.

You can still see that 1962 doc, first watched by 56 million Americans, via the miracle of YouTube. Watching it, it might also strike you what a miraculous job Portman has done in capturing Kennedy’s style and mannerisms. Impressive as it is, there is more to Portman’s performance than mere mimicry, however. She deftly portrays a woman of many parts at different times in her life, and she shows her to be an acutely political figure, conscious of the ways of Washington and how to get things done.

Away from the politics, the screenplay by Noah Oppenheim (The Maze Runner, Allegiant) brings out details of her personal life that have been overshadowed or forgotten. One is left with the impression that despite the attention paid to her throughout her adult life, the real Jackie Kennedy kept herself hidden from almost everyone.

The assassination has been covered so comprehensively by cinema that any filmmaker would struggle to add anything more, but Larrain shows his skill in the unforgettable scenes of the motorcade heading to the hospital.

Portman aside, the casting is patchy, with some actors more at home than others in their portrayal of the men and women who made history. Peter Sarsgaard, for one, has a tough time as Robert Kennedy. His RFK comes across as too angsty, and the dialogue lets him down. Billy Crudup, as White, does far better with a more low key approach. This is a story that does not need loud, jarring notes - all the drama is here already. There should be a mention in dispatches, too, for Greta Gerwig, barely recognisable in bob and glasses as Nancy Tuckerman, an aide to Jackie.

Portman makes an utterly convincing Jackie. It is such a persuasive, nuanced portrayal that, having seen it, one looks at the subject in an entirely new way. Not many studies of the woman with one name achieve that.