Writer and actress Alexis Nichols and director Jared Elkin team up for ‘Becoming Lucy’ and bring the story of Lucille Ball to screen.
Lucille Ball was one of the first female personalities to succeed in television back in the 1950’s. It is a story about fighting against and overcoming the physical shortcomings and the demanded physical features for a potential film character and still making it to the top. Jared Elkin and Alexis Nichols engineer a powerful character with high morale, passion and perseverance and they prevail to bring back to life a character lost in the history of television. Their story talks about many of the obstacles in show business among which: the demand for sex-appeal, physical ‘acrobatic’ or dancing abilities, prejudices that only certain recipes work for the public and the TV and film producers’ fixed ideas and stubbornness. It takes for someone’s strong will to pursue their dream at any cost.
The team of the two mentioned above managed to bring to light a bit of a background to which the true Lucille found it hard to resign to but never let it stand in her way. This nicely outlines a psychological side of the film, potentiating the story at the same time.
We would criticise the empty backgrounds in the interview fragments but the ‘historic’ re-enactments are very well staged and the overall cinematography is nicely framed and ‘lit’.
‘Becoming Lucy’ manages to bring to life a forgotten character from the beginnings of television and to transmit a little nostalgia even to those who are extraneous from who Lucille Ball was and what an important part in the entertainment industry history she played.
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