Based on a True Story

Augusta Price is a pill-popping middle-aged has-been with a boozy diva’s primal thirst for drama. With her life and TV career in shambles, she’s more prone than usual to go off the rails. Elsewhere in London is Frances Bleeker, a shy Californian whose journalism career in the British capital has recently tanked. Fortunately, her newspaper interview with Augusta leads to a gig ghost writing the actress’s tell-all memoir and a bumpy trip to L.A.—where figures from both women’s pasts lurk. From the opening sentence of her debut (“It was not the first time she’d been asked to leave a clinic”), newspaper columnist Renzetti strives to signal a lightweight but outrageous comedy, somewhere between the Stoli-fuelled antics of the BBC’s Absolutely Fabulous and the caustic black wit of Edward St. Aubyn. It’s hit and miss; shopworn ridicule of Californians, a series of slurred drunken scenes, and pratfalls ensue. The story has an out-of-place redemption arc, and the sentimentality tends to domesticate and declaw what would have been a scandalous premise. Peppered liberally with zingers courtesy of Augusta, the result is a comedy that’s sporadically funny, but no more edgy than a television sitcom on a major network. [em]Agent: John Pearce, Westwood Creative Artists. (Apr.) [/em]