2023-06-10 18:08:00
She has sold 30 million albums but is only known in France through her hit Stand By Your Man : hairdresser by profession, mother of a large family and outstanding cook, Tammy Wynette became a country star after meeting her idol George Jones at the end of the 1960s, with whom she established a relationship that was both intimate and musical. run over several decades, made up of multiple tubes and tears. That’s what it says George & Tammy, biopic in the form of a six-episode mini-series, in a genre now marked out, the “country melodrama” which, from the 2018 version of A Star is Born To Walk the Line through the series Nashvilleoften delights with its tragic constancy and sequined exoticism.
George Jones and Tammy Wynette loved each other infinitely, often badly, and sang it to each other: thus could be summed up the series which, from the third episode, seems to be treading water in the face of this story which never ends. But that’s ultimately what’s beautiful, this form of heady repetition of a relationship that can neither live nor end, for these two characters who quickly understand that the only way out will be to sing their torments. , one for the other or together, on stage, even years after their divorce. The songs are integrated into the story, often in their entirety, a rare and radical enough fact to be underlined: they are both the scene and its commentary, which she hums «I’ll just keep on falling in love ‘til I get it right», or that he sings to her while staring at her «He stopped loving her today», while their eyes say the exact opposite, even though they are separated, and she remarried for a long time.
Let us point out in passing that certain songs are sublime, real discoveries, and act as a setting for Jessica Chastain, filmed as closely as possible, singing most of the time live and in a simple and sincere way, breathing in our ears and vibrating with all shares in this role which covers an incalculable number of facets: blond tornado force-fed with painkillers, little piece of sickly woman or everyday angel with a golden voice. Faced with William Shannon who gazes at her, she illuminates this purely American tragedy, and the poetry white trash of these two beings born to love each other while singing. And die of it.
George & Tammy by Abe Sylvia, with Jessica Chastain, Michael Shannon… To see on Paramount +.
#George #Tammy #country #candor #Liberation