Images courtesy 20th Century Fox.
Rules Don’t Apply is a movie split in half between joy and somberness, the big-eyed dream of Hollywood and its unremarkable reality. It’s an extremely good and interesting film.
Too bad no one will ever see it.
Rules Don’t Apply is partially a biopic of Howard Hughes (Warren Beatty, who also writes, directs and produces his first film in 15 years), but is mostly a love story between aspiring actress Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) and Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), one of Hughes’ drivers. Hughes is a super-creepy old man who keeps a network of young actresses he brings in to Hollywood and drivers he maintains for them whose explicit purpose is to make sure the actresses don’t have sex. The drivers are strictly forbidden from trying anything, both characters are deeply Christian and Forbes has a fiance, Sarah Bransford (Taissa Farminga), back in Fresno, but he and Mabrey can’t keep their eyes off each other. Their sexual tension builds and eventually erupts. Then, the movie wakes up to a sobering second half in which they quickly split and their lives crumble.
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