Behold – the moment we all anticipated has finally happened: the Hollywood biopic industrial complex has finally churned out one about Donald Trump. A quirky one. One that, from a distance, seems to have many merits on paper. Starring a Marvel star who is in the midst of reinventing himself as a serious character actor, Sebastian Stan (a name who generates a lot of buzz and interest at home due to his Romanian origins). A selection in the Competition of Cannes, which means the right to fashion itself as “more than just another biopic.” A non-American filmmaker with many awards under his belt in the European circuit, in the person of Danish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi. Most importantly: an “incendiary” subject, in a year of global electoral frenzy, promising to deliver equal amounts of sordidness, amusement, excess, and intrigue. But except for the first card in this hand, The Apprentice fails across the board – and the only reason one might find it worth watching is Stan’s performance, who manages to capture the American almost-dictator down to his smallest gestures and tics (the grin, the stutter, the twitching of his eyebrows, the almost bird-like turns of his head, the pursing of the lips, etc.).

Quite evidently, like many other European (and not only) authors before him – who dipped their toes in the sea at the Croisette and then wanted to go for a swim in the Pacific Ocean –, Abbasi makes his English-language debut with a film that pulls the brakes on any kind of narrative and aesthetic transgression. (Not that that’s a bad thing, given his previous films.) Granted, this will certainly annoy that segment of the audience that wants a critical or even grotesque portrait of the former — and let’s hope this adjective remains up to date – President of the United States (not to mention those who would have wanted a laudatory portrait), but it must be understood that this is not so much the result of circumventing politics as it is a natural consequence of artistic concessions that end up by compromising the entire endeavour. That being said, the Caesar nevertheless takes what’s his by force towards the end of the film, by abhorrently depicting the infamous marital rape inflicted upon Ivana Trump –  in a sequence set to the music of The Pet Shop Boys and featuring various fragments of archival footage, which culminates with a blowjob in a hotel room.

Borrowing its title from the show that cemented the American mogul as a TV superstar in the 2000s, and inverting roles by placing him in the role of upcomer, The Apprentice is part of (or, at the very least, tries to be) a long tradition of films that address the making of a human monster. And within this foundation lies the essential flaw that affects its entire structure (and here I’m not just thinking about its ethical/moral/political/etc. issues). The story starts off with a young Trump who is seemingly just another rich kid from with big dreams – and, at times, you might almost be excused for thinking that he’s just another sweet kid with a big dream, which to restore the lustre of a New York that is lying on the brink of bankruptcy at the end of the ’70s. See, for instance, the scenes dedicated to courting Ivana Trump, played by Maria Bakalova (who perfectly nails the Czech accent in English) – but the most important relationship in the film the one that he has with lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), an unscrupulous man who initiates the young heir to a legally challenged real estate empire (namely, the lawsuit filed by the NAACP for racial discrimination) into the ways of thr world. That is, everything from manipulating the legal system and public administrators (along with Italian mobsters) to the wild bacchanals frequented by the elite of The Big Apple. (For example, see the scene which features a very particular modern artist.) And like all jackals, as soon as the Nixon era sets and the dawn of Reagan neoliberal days (as well as the HIV/AIDS pandemic) begins to rise, Trump will all too soon end up biting the hand that fed him.

This shift in characters splits the film in two – quite literally, down to it’s formal level: whereas the first part is shot on film stock, the second act seems to have been filmed on TV cameras from the eighties (or uses digital effects that emulate its feel), the only formal artifice in the film that is vaguely substantial. And like any other narrative grafted onto this template, The Apprentice works by accumulation – small details in his characterisation that roll downhill like a snowball: a eugenic remark here, the story of an alcoholic brother there, an obsession with watching TV here, an insatiable appetite for junk food there. Otherwise, there’s something to be said about the entry (or rather, appropriation) into the aesthetic mainstream of formulas that, until recently, were the privilege of rather more off-centre films: namely, the interweaving of film formats, the extensive use of archival materials (from atmospheric footage of New York to speeches by contemporaneous politicians, the somewhat-ironic usage of pop hits from its specific era – ranging from Yes Sir, I Can Boogie to… Blue Monday (?!?), which here are nothing more than (empty) formal reflexes that Abbasi has assimilated his festival circuit peers without fully understanding them.

Beyond any other considerations, what is perhaps The Apprentice‘s biggest failing is quite specific: the film utterly misses the fact that, love him or hate him, Donald Trump is an incredibly funny character. The four years he spent at the helm of the world’s biggest economy were an inexhaustible source of memes (to mention my favourite – covfefe) and pure humour (the incredible footage of the 2020 political rally when he learned of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death). It’s downright bizarre that a biopic about Trump, save for 2-3 jokes (for instance, the one where Ivana criticises him for being “orange, fat, and bald”), is deeply unfunny. It might have just be that only a portrait that will know how to flip the on this great speculator of the camrta that is Trump (especially in the digital age) will be able to capture even a bit of the real potential of his story.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.