Review: The Apprentice
by Marta Bałaga
- CANNES 2024: Ali Abbasi’s satire about baby Trump is shallow and pointless, a real misstep for the versatile director
How Ali Abbasi managed to follow Border [+see also:
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film profile] (a women-hating killer!) with a satire about baby Trump, finding his footing thanks to mentor Roy Cohn, is a mystery. But it’s also a misstep for the versatile director, who seems so intrigued by 1970s New York and bouncy period songs that he forgets he had a story to tell.
The Apprentice, screened in the Cannes Film Festival competition, says precisely nothing. No, that’s not fair – it says that Donald Trump was created by Roy Cohn, a powerhouse lawyer and a proud bully. The clueless met the all-knowing in a members-only joint, learnt fast and kicked the king of New York off his throne. A tale as old as time, with some waterfall walls, hair transplants and Jeremy Strong really committing to intense stares and push-ups.
It’s interesting at the beginning, when Trump (Sebastian Stan, pouting away) is still that awkward kid at the party, begging to be noticed by the big shots he so admires. He gets his wish – Cohn (Succession’s Strong) invites him over for a drink. Trump doesn’t drink, but he has big plans, and a friendship is forged. What does Trump get out of it? Everything, including three rules of success, which he will monetise later. What does Cohn get out of it? An admirer, eager and pretty “like Robert Redford”, some journalist claims in a profile. He might be attracted to him, this tall “thoroughbred”, but not necessarily; it’s just nice when people look up to you. But if you have fun creating a monster, don’t be surprised when it bites your hand off and swallows it whole.
That’s where this film fails – Trump’s transformation feels rushed, as if Abbasi realised that he was making this blond kid a little too nice. It’s clear he is more into power than sex, for example, and that’s intriguing – ignoring a gorgeous companion but noticing every rich guy in the room – but soon he goes, for example, from fearing his cruel father to smiling happily when he finally proudly calls him “a killer”, from buying future wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) crazy amounts of flowers to raping her. Which, it has to be said, is an unpleasant, unnecessary scene, once again proving that all too often, directors use female suffering and sexual violence to say something about a man. As for Ivana, she is quickly discarded. She gets to talk about some fake Tiffany cufflinks, however. Hooray.
Abbasi goes broad from the start: there’s Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speech; there’s a meeting with Andy Warhol, who gets Trump right away, because Andy also does whatever is currently selling. There was some hope that a non-US director would notice something new in this mess, that he would manage to demystify a figure that refuses to go away. But showing Trump in his shy days, pining for attention and throwing up when finally forced to drink something other than water, doesn’t achieve that.
This promised to be a controversial, important film – it’s not. It also feels like a TV movie, made quickly and with a ready-made period soundtrack. Maybe it’s just too early to fully grasp Trump, already such a cartoonish figure that on the screen he doesn’t feel real. Or maybe it’s time to stop fixating on the hair (which Stan touches, brushes and hairsprays here every other minute) and ask why his antics and his “art of the deal” are so appealing to people. Nobody knows Trump, and nobody understands what he is after these days – that’s scary. And nobody will, at least not now, because The Apprentice lets him off the hook once again, with Stan’s version continuing to “admit nothing, deny everything”.
The Apprentice was produced by Profile Pictures (Denmark), Scythia Films (Canada), Tailored Films (Ireland), and the USA’s Gidden Media and Kinematics. Its international sales are managed by Rocket Science.
Photogallery 20/05/2024: Cannes 2024 - The Apprentice
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© 2024 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it
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