Cannes film festival screens Val Kilmer documentary

CANNES: Val Kilmer has made an intriguing and bittersweet return to the big screen at the Cannes film festival in a new documentary charting his stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood through his own home recordings.

The Amazon-produced documentary "Val" is a tender portrait of the actor, now 61, whose career has seen more ups and downs than the fighter jets in his breakout film "Top Gun".

Most striking is Kilmer´s voice, turned into a near-incomprehensible rasp by treatment for throat cancer.

It has not quite ended his career -- he is due to reprise his iconic role as Iceman this autumn in the long-awaited sequel "Top Gun: Maverick".

But the documentary shows him as a shadow of his former self, reduced to a life of signing autographs at conventions -- as he puts it, "selling his old self".

The film draws heavily from Kilmer´s huge library of home videos -- he carried a camera with him throughout his life -- providing intimate behind-the-scenes footage from his hits, including "Tombstone", "The Doors" and "Batman Forever".

- ´Difficult´ reputation -

The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "agile and alive", and praised the frankness of its star: "How many certified movie stars would allow themselves to be filmed so physically altered, and on the inescapable downslope of an A-list career?"

There is a juicy clash with director John Frankenheimer on the set of "The Island of Dr Moreau", a flop that marked the start of his career´s decline in the late 1990s, but the documentary mostly downplays his obsessive -- and reportedly exasperating -- work habits.

"The film-makers sometimes gloss over aspects of Kilmer´s legacy that would have been fascinating to interrogate, such as his reputation for being difficult with his directors," wrote Screen Daily.

But it said there was "a fragility to ´Val´ -- and not just in Kilmer´s physical presence -- that´s unexpectedly moving."

Kilmer was the youngest person ever accepted to New York´s fabled Juilliard school and longed to make serious films, only to find himself in a series of schlocky blockbusters and expensive flops.

"Being difficult was the price he made everyone pay for trapping him in a system he found too little satisfaction in," said Variety.

Chastened by a decade or more of low-budget movies, Kilmer was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film, when he was struck by cancer.

"Yet he now has the aura of a man who was dealt his cosmic comeuppance and came through it," wrote Variety. "He fell from stardom, maybe from grace, but he did it his way."