The Audrey Hepburn Story (2000)
Audrey Hepburn is beloved, of course, and she’s one of my favorites, too. Naturally it’s a tricky prospect when Hollywood or anyone else tries to bring a legend back to life and the 2000 miniseries tried really, really hard.
I don’t know how I missed this series when it was on TV. 2000 was rather a busy year for me, what with graduating from college and other things I won’t go into, but Amazon Prime is a repository for plenty of content that might otherwise be forgotten, or in some cases, should be forgotten. The Audrey Hepburn Story is a little bit of both.
Naturally, the Amazon Prime version has shed any pretense of the series being a series and shows it in one go, which ends up running for two hours and fourteen minutes. I only bring that up because a lot happens and a lot doesn’t. It drags and then it doesn’t. It’s badly done and then it’s charming.
The series (movie) is bookended by the making of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, with the biopic starting with the first scene of Breakfast and ending with its last, with the entire cast and crew cheering and Audrey hugging the cat. In between, the series focuses on Audrey’s childhood, her parents’ separation, her time in occupied Holland, and her early career, including her study of ballet and her sudden career change.
For some reason there’s no mention of why Audrey was discouraged from becoming a prima ballerina (at five feet, seven inches, she was too tall for most male ballet dancers of the time) or her first film, The Secret People, in which she played a ballet dancer. The film gives the impression that she just wasn’t good enough as a dancer; in reality, Audrey was told she could become a second ballerina or teach and she was naturally crushed.
There are also bits about Audrey’s relationships with men, but no one seems to stick until she meets Mel Ferrer. Other than that, the series zooms in pretty heavily on Audrey’s relationship with her estranged father and her desire to have children.
Yep, in case it’s not totally clear, I’m a bit mixed about this thing. There are quite a few liberties taken with not only Audrey’s story, but with the look of the production.
First of all, I never would have pictured Jennifer Love Hewitt as Audrey. Maybe that’s why I didn’t watch the series when it first aired—all I could think of when I saw the TV spots was Sister Act 2 and Party of Five. While I don’t doubt Hewitt is an Audrey fan and that she gave it her all, her accent mostly sounds affected and stiff. When she relaxes into the role she’s fine, but I still didn’t see Audrey. Ironically, Emmy Rossum, who plays Audrey as a teenager, seems to come across more naturally, which could be due to the teenaged Audrey being more of an unknown quantity.
I wish there could have been more attention paid to Audrey’s time in Holland, which would have been a very interesting angle for the film to take, but it just barely touches on how hard it was and how it affected Audrey for the rest of her life. The real Audrey, her mother, and her brothers spent Operation Market Garden hiding in a basement, for instance, but this was never mentioned. Meanwhile, everyone film Audrey meets in London is absolutely bright-eyed as if the Blitz and the Doodlebug bombings never happened.
With the exception of Frances Fisher as Audrey’s mother, Ella van Heemstra, most of the people in the series (argh, movie) were glaringly bland. Eric McCormack as Mel Ferrer was just OK, but he’s more McCormack than Ferrer. Sam Stone and Peter Feder, who play William Wyler and Billy Wilder are only distinguished by the movies they’re supposed to be directing. Ray Landry, who played Humphrey Bogart for the Sabrina scenes, was absolutely horrible and not a bit like Bogie, as if he got pulled in off the street to do the part.
Most of the costumes are fairly decent with the exception of the black Givenchy gown Audrey wears in the opening scenes of Breakfast At Tiffany’s; it looks cheap and there are nylon panels accenting the shoulder straps and darts in the wrong places. I suppose this was done to accomodate Hewitt’s bustier frame, but Givenchy would never have approved.
He wouldn’t have approved of Audrey’s beads, either—for some reason she’s wearing junky-looking brown beads instead of something that looks at least vaguely diamond-like. Add in the Muzak-esque rendition of “Moon River” playing over the scene and it can’t help but look contrived.
Apparently Audrey’s son, Sean Ferrer and her companion, Robert Wolders liked the film when they saw it. I’m glad they got into it; I kept telling myself all through The Audrey Hepburn Story to have an open mind, but it’s hard to do that when Audrey is such a formidable figure, even thirty years after her death. Kudos to everyone who made the series for trying, but some expectations are just too high.
The Audrey Hepburn Story is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Rated PG.
My grade: C+
Principal Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Francis Fisher, Eric McCormack, Keir Dullea, Gabriel Macht, Peter Giles, Emmy Rossum, Seana Kofoed, Michael J. Burg, Sarah Hyland, Sam Stone, Peter Feder, Marcel Jeannin, Joan Copeland, Mark Comacho, Lenie Scoffie, Lise Roy, Catherine Colvey
Written by Marsha Norman.
Directed by Steven Robman.