Hillbilly Elegy review: Glenn Close has little to work with in this deeply conservative melodrama

And the award for most distracting hair and make-up goes to… the twits who worked on this Netflix melodrama. Thanks to them, Glenn Close (playing working-class, Kentucky-born matriarch Bonnie Vance), looks like a cross between Terrahawks’s Zelda and Bad Grandpa.

The film’s source text is J D Vance’s memoir, which tracks the author’s journey from Ohio-based wreck to Yale-educated winner. Vance suggests this transformation wouldn’t have been possible without his maverick granny, the aforementioned Bonnie. Evocative and empathetic, the book is genuinely gripping, if aggravating (it’s full of musings on welfare scroungers and “learned helplessness”).

Director Ron Howard, working with writer Vanessa Taylor, has cut out the heavy Republican rhetoric but also simplified the story. In real life, Vance had supportive aunts and uncles, an eager-to-please dad and a grandfather who was a whizz at maths. Here, the family tree’s been pruned. JD (Owen Asztalos) and his elder sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett) basically only have Bonnie to protect them from their opioid-addicted mum Bev (Amy Adams).

It’s no chore to watch Adams. Her Bev is as spiteful as Goodfellas’s Tommy DeVito and as fragile as Blanche duBois. In one scene, we see the character wheeling through the street and realise she’s just self-harmed. As if inspired by Adams’s talent, Howard, for once, does something interesting with the camera, offering a horrific but also beautifully groggy shot of Bev’s excavated wrist.

Alas, the script doesn’t delve deeply enough into the twisted relationship between Bev and Bonnie (Close is brilliant, but has so little to work with). Instead, we’re forced to spend time with grown-up JD (Gabriel Basso) and his girlfriend (Freida Pinto), who are dull and duller.

In the present day, JD is all set to attend an interview that will usher him into a world where everyone is rich, honest and happy (seriously). But then Lindsay rings to say that Bev needs help. Uh-oh! Will our hero’s loyalty to Bev doom him to a life of dysfunction?

Hillbilly Elegy may not be overtly political, yet its message is deeply conservative. Over and over again it’s suggested that poverty is all in the mind.

If this were a wrestling match, round one would involve JD and his granny squaring up to laziness and self-pity, while round two would consist of JD facing the same opponents, this time on his own. Suffice to say, unless you’re a silly billy, you’ll see through the pantomime. This fight ain’t fair; it’s been rigged.

On Netflix from November 24