The Eyes of Tammy Faye – refreshingly strange biopic about a uniquely American delusion

Though much of Michael Showalter’s directorial work – from the breakout hit The Big Sick to Will Ferrell sitcom The Shrink Next Door – has tended on the more lighthearted and accessible side of comedy, a lot of his writing and acting work flies closer to the bizarre. Wet Hot American Summer started out strange as a 2001 movie and only got more delightfully surreal as it transitioned to TV, and it’s more in this vein that his new drama The Eyes of Tammy Faye has been made. It might sound on paper like a typical Oscar-bait biopic but, for better and worse, it’s a far stranger affair, embracing every gaudy grotesquery of the televangelist world in inhabits.

Tammy Faye Bakker (played here by Jessica Chastain) was the gospel-singing wife of televangelist preacher Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield), and the pair conquered the world with their broadcasting, pretty much inventing the bizarre world of TV preaching. They got immensely wealthy off the back of their ability to manipulate people’s faith, before being brought low by a series of scandals and financial mismanagement. As the title might suggest, Showalter is much more interested in Tammy Faye than Jim, and takes an almost cradle-to-grave biopic approach to build her out as a strange and complicated person.

This proves a fruitful choice, thanks in no small part to a committed and empathetic performance from Chastain. She and Showalter find in Tammy Faye not only a true believer but also someone who was just desperate to be loved and accepted, and for other people to also feel that love – the scene in which she tearfully interviews an AIDS patient on her show is genuinely moving. It’s a very strong piece of acting, finding humanity in an utterly absurd figure, though the sheer extent of Chastain’s Tammy Faye prosthetics – ballooning her face up to what looks like twice its natural size – do distract. You never get used to them, and sometimes it does feel a bit like you’re watching the prosthetics more than the person.

Garfield fares less well in a role equally as ridiculous but less fleshed out, and the combination of the lead couple’s grating voices and puffy faces can sometimes be tough to stomach. This, you realise, is the point, and it’s a point made particularly well both whenever the monstrous Jerry Falwell (played by Vincent D’Onofrio) is on screen and in the excellent final scene, which brings Showalter’s entire thesis into sharp focus. Suddenly pulling back the curtain on a very American kind of delusional thinking, it’s funny and whip-smart, and you find yourself wishing Tammy Faye could have kept up that particular tone from start to finish.

As it stands, Tammy Faye is often a bit more curious than it is compelling, relying on standout individual scenes to really pull you in while you go through the motions elsewhere. It’s boldly odd in a way that is appreciated, but you can sometimes feel it suppressing a more acidic side of itself, a side that would have probably elevated past awards-season diversion into something more.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is in UK cinemas from 4 February.