Seberg review: Kristen Stewart’s take on a cinema icon deserves a smarter film

By the end of Benedict Andrews’s political thriller, it feels as if the real Seberg has been edged out of her own film

Dir: Benedict Andrews. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Jack O’Connell, Margaret Qualley, Zazie Beetz, Anthony Mackie, Vince Vaughn. 15 cert, 102 mins.

With her cropped hair, dainty flats, and New York Herald Tribune T-shirt – its sleeves neatly rolled up – Jean Seberg strolled into Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless like a siren of the future. Her face was sharp and exact, but counteracted by large, luminous eyes and a smile that melted into childlike delight. Kristen Stewart, who plays the American-born Seberg in Benedict Andrews’s political thriller about her persecution by the FBI, has a passing resemblance to the actor. But her downturned pout and heavier brow make it hard for her to look as coy as Seberg; Stewart’s gaze seems more open and direct, in a way that’s always helped her performances feel more honest.

She doesn’t do much to imitate Seberg, either – there’s little of her characteristic Midwestern accent. Instead, Stewart attempts something more experimental: she fuses actor and subject, asking audiences to find the place where the two intersect. She’s playing herself as much as she’s playing Seberg. It would have been an interesting ploy if Seberg were a smarter film.

The story begins in 1968, as the actor leaves her family behind in Paris and boards a flight to Hollywood, where work beckons. It’s on that trip that she meets Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie, composed and charismatic), a prominent activist in the Black Power movement. Seberg wants to contribute to the cause in any way she can, so she starts writing cheques for the Black Panthers and hosting fundraisers in her mansion in the hills.

That makes her an instant target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation, which sought to target and destroy any political group the United States government deemed a subversive influence on society. She’s tracked, her home is bugged, and vicious rumours are spread about her private life. The effect is ruinous. Stewart’s presence (and performance) seems to gesture at wider ideas about celebrity and privacy – she communicates that sense of sheer terror and helplessness in a way that’s heartbreaking. But, in truth, Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse give the actor little to chew on. She ends up floating listlessly through Seberg, constantly whispering “who are you?” and “why are you doing this?” down the phone line like she’s about to become Ghostface’s next victim.

Neither does the film have much to say about meaningful white allyship. This version of Seberg spouts simplistic, half-hearted slogans like “when people are in love, they’re colourblind” and throws money at a problem she doesn’t even seem that interested in understanding. The one person who challenges her, Hakim’s wife (Zazie Beetz), ends up as somewhat of an antagonist. A bigger problem is how much of the film is spent on giving one of the FBI agents, Jack O’Connell’s Jack Solomon, his own redemptive arc. By the end, it feels as if the real Seberg has been edged out of her own biopic.