In the most revealing scene in Jay Kelly , the handsome, salt-and-pepper-haired titular movie star (George Clooney) stands in the cramped toilet of a moving train, staring into a mirror. Hesitates the names of actors like Cary Grant and Clark Gable aloud before reciting his own name with a different intonation each time, as if trying to unearth a performance as himself with every repetition. It relates directly to the film’s opening with a quote by Sylvia Plath: “It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else, or nobody at all.”

With the exception of last year’s Wolfs and, of course, those Nespresso ads, these days Clooney spends more time in the director’s chair than in front of the camera. But in the sparkling, somewhat slight Jay Kelly , ta

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