Film a Clef

Rating: 6/10 (20 November 2009)

There is a French expression, "roman à clef" (literally "novel with a key"), which is used to denote what are ostensibly works of fiction but where the characters are actually disguised versions of real individuals and where the events described are disguised versions of real-life events. Hollywood often does the same sort of thing. "The Greek Tycoon", for example, tries desperately if disingenuously to pretend that it is not about Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy, but the only truly fictitious element in the film is the standard disclaimer stating that "all characters are fictitious" and that any similarity to real individuals is coincidental.
"Dreamgirls ", which tells the story of a female African-American singing trio with a suspicious similarity to The Supremes, can be regarded as another example of a "film à clef", although it combines its disguised biographical elements with some genuinely invented material, a mixture of fact and fiction which has become known as "faction". I have never seen the Broadway musical on which it is based, but I understand that when it was adapted for the screen some of the details were changed to make the story even closer to that of The Supremes; for example, in the stage show the three girls are from Chicago but in the film they are from Detroit, the hometown of the real Supremes. In the film the group are originally called "The Dreamettes", but later change their name to "The Dreams", just as The Supremes changed their name from "The Primettes". The three individual members are called Effie White (for which read Florence Ballard), Lorrell Robinson (Mary Wilson) and Deena Jones (Diana Ross). The similarity between the names "Deena" and "Diana" is presumably no accident.
In the film Effie is originally the lead singer of "The Dreamettes", but she is replaced in that role by the less talented but more attractive Deena; the group's manager Curtis Taylor, Jr (based upon Berry Gordy, Jr.) feels that Deena's slim figure and glamorous looks will make the group more marketable to a mass audience. Deena also replaces Effie as Curtis' lover, even though Effie is pregnant with Curtis' daughter, and goes on to marry him. Effie is sacked from the group and sinks into poverty, while Deena becomes a major star. Her attempts at a comeback are sabotaged by Curtis, who forces Deena to record a cover version of Effie's comeback single and then bribes radio stations to play the cover rather than the original. There are also subplots involving Lorrell's romance with a male soul singer named James "Thunder" Early and Effie's songwriter brother "CC".
Cinematic biographies are not always totally accurate, although the existence of libel laws mean that when they depart from the strict truth they do so in order to whitewash their subjects rather than to blacken them. ("Ray", for example, plays down the extent of Ray Charles' womanising). The makers of "faction", however, are not bound by the same rules; fictitious characters have no right to sue for libel, so if the events and characters depicted in a film can be passed off as fictitious, the film makers are generally safe from any lawsuits. There certainly are a number of differences between the plot of "Dreamgirls" and the story of The Supremes. Gordy Berry, for example, did not have a child by Florence Ballard, and was never married to Diana Ross, although he was at one time her lover. There is a happy ending for Effie, although in real life there was no such ending for Ballard, who died at the age of only thirty-two.
These differences, however, were never enough to overcome the resemblances between several of the characters and real people. The film could leave viewers with the impression that Berry was unscrupulous in his business affairs (DreamWorks and Paramount were forced to apologise to him for that implication) and that Ross was a talentless performer whose success was mostly down to her looks and to her sleeping with the boss. I am not the world's greatest authority on Motown or on pop music in general, but I know enough to be aware that any such insinuation would be quite baseless.
None of the above is to say that "Dreamgirls" is a bad film. There is a lot about it that is good; the music will certainly keep any fan of the Motown Sound happy. The plot, of course, is largely one showbiz cliché after another, but there are some good acting performances from the likes of Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy, and a brilliant one from Jennifer Hudson as Effie which won her the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. (Remarkably, this was her debut film). From an acting point of view this was well-deserved, although I felt that the role of Effie is really a leading one and Hudson should have been nominated in the "Best Actress" category. I was less taken with Beyoncé Knowles as Deena; the lovely Beyoncé has the looks of a Hollywood starlet, but on this evidence lacks the screen presence to make her a real star. She might do better to concentrate on her musical career.
The film's reliance on real events, while simultaneously pretending to distance itself from them, did, however, leave a slightly bitter aftertaste. The ethics of "faction" can be somewhat dubious. I can only hope that, when Beyoncé Knowles is a grande dame of the music industry, some time around the year 2040, she is not confronted with a film which treats the story of her days with Destiny's Child in the same cavalier manner. 6/10