Jessica Lange as actress with dementia

Lange is so good that she gives this therapeutic version of The Show Must Go On a worldly center that you can roll with and almost believe in.

In “The Great Lillian Hall,” Jessica Lange plays a veteran stage actress – a legend of the Broadway stage – who always puts on airs, recites excerpts from her favorite roles and continues the tradition of legendary actresses known for playing characters like Blanche DuBois because they actually have a lot of Blanche in them. (They believe their own illusions.) Still, just because Lillian Hall is a flamboyant grande dame doesn’t mean she doesn’t show you who she is. Lange, a 75-year-old beauty, has a face that has only become more expressive with the years. In “The Great Lillian Hall,” this face is a map of the emotions we read. Even when Lillian is wrong (even when she is wrong herself), the majesty of her feelings shines through.

There’s a moving scene in which Lillian sits on a porch with her adult daughter, Margaret (Lily Rabe), for whom she never had time while raising her; she was still performing, doing eight performances a week. In the evening, however, she came home in time to sing young Margaret to sleep, and now, on the porch, she sings softly that same song: “Shh little darling, don’t cry…” Her voice is old now, and it’s cracking, and what we see and hear in Jessica Lange, expressed in emotions as delicate as parchment, are three levels of consciousness: a pang of longing; the regret Lillian now feels because of her absent mother; and something new – a quiet gulf of sadness that she is leaving now, to a place from which she will never return. Because what no one else knows is that she has been diagnosed with dementia.

There have now been quite a few dramatic films that deal with dementia, and I have stated publicly that I find them sometimes touching but dramatically frustrating. As the main character moves away, he or she may also move away from the audience. “The Great Lillian Hall” solves this problem in a simple way. The film takes place at the beginning of Lillian’s symptoms, so even though she is in rehearsals for a major new Broadway production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” where she must deal with memory problems, the film does not. is not a gothic medical film. soap opera in which she suddenly begins to forget who she is. Rather, it’s about how Lillian, grappling with this devastating diagnosis, makes peace with where she’s going by taking stock of who she’s been.

Its symptoms cause drama during the rehearsal process. She screws up her lines, screws up the blocking, forgets what act she’s in, and at one point literally falls on her face. Her most dramatic symptom, however, remains offstage: She continues to hallucinate that she is seeing her beloved late husband, Carson (Michael Rose), a theater director who, for some reason, looks like to an elegant European drug trafficker. David (Jesse Williams), the director of “The Cherry Orchard,” is a downtown star moving to Broadway, and he hasn’t lost faith in Lillian. But his tough producer (Cindy Hogan) did. She keeps talking about bringing in an understudy to replace her.

The film, written by Elisabeth Seldes Annacone and directed by Michael Cristofer, is a contraption that works (for the most part). It’s assembled from devices, as if Lillian’s neighbor, with whom she flirts on their majestic adjacent Central Park South balconies, is a cornball Lothario played with blasé affection by Pierce Brosnan, or the daughter of Lillian saying something like, “You never really wanted to be my mother.” You just wanted to play the part! ”, or the black-and-white mockumentary interview clips that play like Bob Fosse Gone Cable Lite. All the suspense over whether Lillian will make it through the rehearsal process and make it on opening night – she’s the play’s box office draw – draws you in, even as you realize it’s all built around a major tinge of unreality. Is anyone struggling with how Lillian is really going to be able to put on this show all week, for months?

Yet Lange’s performance is so good that it gives this therapeutic version of The Show Must Go On a worldly center that you can roll with and almost believe in. Lillian relies on her seasoned assistant, Edith (Kathy Bates), for just about everything, and these two actors have a cruelly intimate and spirited interplay that you could listen to for hours. There are a few scenes that exploit the agony of dementia (and Lange, in those moments, is powerful), but “The Great Lillian Hall” is mostly a feel-good movie about using playfulness. actor to transform the lemons that life gives you. a great lemonade illusion.