Jay Kelly (15)

A loosely metatextual portrait of its A-list actor, Noah Baumbach’s wistful character study explores the personal cost of fame inherent in being a silver-screen icon.

Baumbach (Marriage Story) gives us a charming satire, packed with in-jokes about film stardom and Hollywood. Jay (Clooney) is told, by his faithful manager Ron Sukenick (Adam Sandler), that a beloved mentor has died. So begins the identity crisis at the heart of the story. We glimpse the artifice behind Jay’s seemingly effortless physical splendour. But the question he asks himself now is: what — if anything — lies inside?  The answer is sought in Tuscany, where he is to be honoured at a film festival. The jaunt also means he can hang with his Gen Z daughter on a standard class train through France.

Over the course of the film, we get a break-up in a restaurant; a lovers’ goodbye at a station; a man apprehending a thief who stole an old lady’s handbag; and not one, but two sequences of Clooney running after a departing car. Softer than your typically spiky Baumbach film, Jay Kelly will tug at your heartstrings until they snap clean in two.