A fitting punishment for anyone who felt that “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” didn’t lavish enough love upon the late Sharon Tate, Benedict Andrews’ blandly ill-conceived “Seberg” is proof enough that extra screen time isn’t the secret to a more satisfying cinematic séance.

Which isn’t to say that this scattered look at the last years of Jean Seberg’s life gives the actress its undivided attention. Less a biopic about the “Breathless” star than a paranoid thriller that revolves around her fateful role in the FBI’s COINTELPRO surveillance program, Andrews’ film might position Seberg as its subject, but it ultimately just uses her as a screen on which to project a story about someone else. Whereas Quentin Tarantino suffused Tate’s…

The trailer truly scared me into thinking this could be awful, but I actually liked this film quite a bit. I'm a sucker for a good biopic and Jean Seberg was one of my top thirty favorite actors of all time. I've read her history, seen most of her films (even the obscure ones), and visited her grave a handful of times. So it seems like this film was made for me.

I remember seeing Kirsten Dunst on David Letterman several years ago; it was probably around 2003 or 2004. She had a short pixie cut and claimed she wanted to play Jean Seberg. Cut to over fifteen years later when Kristen Stewart landed the coveted role. I don't know…

“Who is Jean Seberg?”, many might ask. Seberg was an American actress who lived half her life in France. Her performance in Jean-Luc Godard‘s 1960 film Breathless immortalised her as an icon of French New Wave cinema. Now, Hollywood has found the perfect actress in Kristen Stewart, to portray her and the real events of the late 1960s when Hoover’s FBI targeted her because of her political and romantic involvement with civil rights activist Hakim Jamal (played by Anthony Mackie).

Seberg isn’t your typical biopic, it dramatises certain events, and thrills at the same time, while delving deeper into Seberg’s psyche and, in the end, justified paranoia. But first we get to meet a very ambitious Jean back in France,…

"Inspired by real events in the life of French New Wave icon Jean Seberg (Kristen Stewart). In the late 1960s, Hoover's FBI targeted her because of her political and romantic involvement with civil rights activist Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie)"

A story of nasty racism, government snooping and ensuing madness in the victim which is a good combination for a compelling story.

Sadly while decent, much of the film's plot and direction is relatively functional. Even the recently-very-good-in-lots-of-stuff-now-he's-not-doing-comedies Vince Vaughan is very bland in it as a secret agent doing snooping.

There's pretty much only two performances in this film and that's Kristen and Anthony but most significantly, being the top lead in the film, Kristen.

It's quite brief at 102m…