Backstage

Under the clichéd spell of rock-and-roll promiscuity and pills popped, Seigner shows astonishing range as the detached superstar who still fixates on her ex-boyfriend and has mood swings like a manic-depressive on fast-forward.

There's a pleasing tension in the air as their relationship comes to seem like something of a contest: With two women this needy, who will out-crazy the other?

Director Emmanuelle Bercot's film offers a fascinating account of how a vulnerable star might mistake fan worship for something real.

With its booming soundtrack of songs -- written by Laurent Marimbert and sung by Seigner herself -- and good chemistry between Le Besco and Seigner, pic at times has an operatic emotional intensity that will turn off some viewers but provide a guilty pleasure for others.

The results aren't gothic and bloody, as they were in the Lauren Bacall film "The Fan," or elegant and ironic as in the Bette Davis classic "All About Eve"--though the plot suggests a bit of both.

As a take on celebrity as religious mass derangement, Backstage is nominally interesting. As a study of two characters, it's not very convincing.

Bercot moves the characters up and down like lines on a chart, never granting full access to what any of them are thinking. And access is what Backstage promised.