Gia (1998)

(On DVD, August 2008) There wouldn’t be any interest for this film nowadays if it wasn’t for the headlining presence of Angelina Jolie in one of her first striking roles as the titular fashion model. The plot is your basic story of addiction, fame, tangled relationships and tragic death. There’s a pseudo-documentary frame that more or less work, but it’s the fictional segments featuring Jolie that really pull the film together. The cinematography is a bit above what you may expect from a straight-to-TV feature, but it doesn’t take much to show the limits of the film’s budget. The look at the New York fashion industry during the late seventies is intriguing, but leaves viewers wanting more. As a biopic, it feels familiar: see it for Jolie’s performance.