Judy review: Renee Zellweger gives the performance of a lifetime in Garland biopic

There’s something more ambitious here than a mere tribute: her Garland encompasses her own setbacks, the sacrifices of countless others in her industry, as well as the pain of every woman who’s been crushed under the heel of society’s demands

Dir: Rupert Goold. Starring: Renée Zellweger, Jessie Buckley, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, and Michael Gambon. 12A cert, 118 mins

This is Renée Zellweger’s Judy. It doesn’t belong to Rupert Goold, its director. Nor does it belong to Tom Edge, its screenwriter. It’s a performance of such overwhelming force that it wrests authorship from every other hand that guided the film’s creation. Zellweger is magnetic as Judy Garland, depicted in the final years of her life. What may be missing in Edge’s screenplay (which is refined but unadventurous), we read a thousand times over in the actor’s face – whether in a pained, but eager smile or the wild look of a lost child.

Set in 1969, the film sees Garland forced into a painful decision. She must leave behind her son and daughter (Lewin Lloyd and Game of Thrones’ Bella Ramsey) and travel to London for a five-week run of concerts. Only then can she earn enough money to buy a house and ensure she won’t lose custody of her kids. This is Garland depicted as Hollywood’s great cautionary tale.

As a child star, she was fed a diet of amphetamines, barbiturates, and venomous attacks on her self-esteem. As MGM head Louis B Mayer (Richard Cordery) repeatedly tells a young Garland, back in her Wizard of Oz days, there are a hundred other, prettier girls who’d love to take her place. “Let’s see how Judy measures up,” he says, before we flash forward, with a touch of cruel irony, to a burnt-out Garland being ejected from the hotel suite she can’t afford.

Zellweger allows that childhood trauma to invade her body. It seeps into every word and mannerism. You see it in the bewildered way she looks at Liza Minnelli (Gemma-Leah Devereux), her eldest daughter, when she reveals that she isn’t anxious about an upcoming performance. How could she imagine life without self-doubt? In private, when she’s asked to rehearse or to belt out a scale so her doctor can check her vocal cords, you can feel the nervousness creep in. It’s only under the stage lights, when something primal kicks in, that she comes alive.

In many ways, the actor delivers the perfect kind of biopic performance. She doesn’t sound exactly like the star, especially when she sings (who could?), but what’s more important is capturing the ravenous hunger in Garland’s eyes, as if she’s afraid that her talent might slip away from her at any given moment. Instead of fixating on imitation, Zellweger seeks out the middle between her and Garland. We’re always aware, to some degree, that we’re watching the star of Chicago and Bridget Jones’s Diary. But it feels poignant, especially because Judy is being billed as Zellweger’s big comeback after a six-year hiatus. There’s something more ambitious here than a mere tribute: her Garland encompasses her own setbacks, the sacrifices of countless others in her industry, as well as the pain of every woman who’s been crushed under the heel of society’s demands.

The film’s structure, regrettably, is a checklist of tragic biopic conventions. We watch her collapse on stage and direct tantrums at those closest to her, while the camera always finds itself drawn back to the same shot of pills resting on a bedside table. The supporting cast all do a commendable job (especially Jessie Buckley, as her assistant, and Finn Wittrock, as her fifth and final husband, Mickey Deans). Yet their main service to the story is to look on helplessly as Garland propels herself towards self-obliteration.

The film is smart, at least, to complicate Garland’s relationship with fame. She can yearn for a normal life, but there’s little hope she can ever escape her impulse to perform – it’s been nurtured in her ever since she first stepped out on a stage at two years old. She’s an actor even around her own children, comforting them before their imminent abandonment by jumping into a wardrobe and pretending she’s gone to live there with her son’s stuffed rabbit. Zellweger pours as much energy into these moments of wit and gaiety as she does into her periods of anguish. It’s her own way of resisting the narrative that Garland was a passive victim of her circumstances. And it works, abolishing many of the film’s weaknesses single-handedly. Judy, in turn, is happy to let Zellweger take centre stage. Thank god, because it’s the performance of a lifetime.