McNamara's over-the-top follow-up to Oscar Season
brings back Juliette Greyson, head of public relations at an exclusive L.A. hotel. Juliette is vacationing in Florence when she sees drug-addled starlet Mercy Talbot about to dive into a fountain, much to the delight of the paparazzi. Reluctantly, Juliette rescues Mercy, who is AWOL from a movie shoot in Rome, and takes her to Cerreta, a country estate that Juliette half-owns. As Mercy seems less fraught out of Rome, the movie shoot relocates to Cerreta, and Juliette gets saddled with Mercy's harridan of a mother, dozens of Hollywood types weighed down by addiction, neuroses, and narcissism, and worst of all, Michael O'Connor, screen legend and Juliette's one-time lover. Attempted murders, detectives, overdoses, celebrity self-help gurus, and Cerreta's financial woes are all rolled into a messy but entertaining whole. The setting—Perugia in the summer—works well as a backdrop for this colorful, all-stops-out seriocomic romp. (June)
