Jane Fonda in Five Acts

I said to myself that it is extremely sad to look at a woman’s life through her relationships with the men who influenced her (to each is bound a certain topic and the narrative is structured based on those topics rather than on the chronological sequence of events), but the final chapter and emancipatory point more or less legitimise the chosen therapeutic concept. The greatest benefit of the film is Fonda herself, who assesses the men in her life (her father Henry is no exception) and her past and her current selves openly and (self)critically, without the need to conceal or sugar-coat anything (e.g. she admits that her beauty and thus sexuality aided her in her career, and she regrets that she did not have sufficient courage to resist undergoing plastic surgery). With her composure, she vindicates the narrative of self-acceptance, liberation from the belief that we can be a complete being only at the side of a loved one, which the documentary adheres to. The other interviewees and even director Susan Lacy are more benevolent toward her, which is in line with the choice of words and topics. The son raised among North Vietnamese soldiers and members of the Irish Republican Army presents his traumatising childhood as a series of humorous incidents; no one who fundamentally disagreed with Fonda’s activism was given more space (except for Richard Nixon, who is even more hated in the United States than she is). Despite Fonda’s sincerity, the tone of the film is thus somewhat sentimental. In any case, it is still far from the celebratory documentary portraits that merely uninventively summarise facts that you can find on Wikipedia. It is an intellectually thorough, inspiring film that, in a very viewer-friendly manner (the use of a large amount of archival materials contributes to its liveliness), addresses issues close to every person, not just a single extraordinarily intelligent and attractive actress, political activist and promoter of VHS aerobics. 80% (01.10.2018)