FROM THE JOURNALS OF JEAN SEBERG

Jean Seberg was a fluke, a star, and a suicide in one short, unlikely life. Chosen out of nowhere by mogul Otto Preminger to topline his 1957 flop “Saint Joan,” her career was unexpectedly revived by an enigmatic lead role in Godard's hit, “Breathless.” An unsatisfying series of relationships, on screen and off, and a twisted celebrity marriage coincided with a vile FBI harassment campaign over her pro-Black Panther stance in the 1960s. In 1979 she died in Paris, but Mark Rappaport brings Jean Seberg back (incarnated by Mary Beth Hurt) to reflect sardonically on her stake in Hollywood, her pyre in public. A dark mirror held before the lens, the imagined “journals” encompass Clint Eastwood, Jane Fonda, J. Edgar Hoover, the Gulf War, the language of cinema, and a sick trend of women degraded on celluloid by their own husbands. Renewed interest in Seberg, natural-born tabloid fodder, ensures more Saint Jean docs or biopics upcoming, but none so brilliant, meaningful and disturbing. – Charles Cassady