Still, there’s plenty to enjoy, including a scene-stealing Maria Bakalova as the glamorous and self-assured Ivana Zelníčková, a model who enters Trump’s orbit and quickly becomes his wife and business partner, much to Cohn’s chagrin. Not long after, the power balance between Cohn and Trump begins to shift. Encouraged by the former, the latter pushes on with the construction of Trump Tower, and soon, he’s the one who becomes the toast of New York while Cohn, now pale and bleary-eyed from a battle with AIDS, shuffles around parties in his wake, eager for an audience.
It’s in this portion of the story, as the former apprentice becomes the master, that Stan finally comes into his own. The actor acquires Trump’s tics, now so familiar to us, piece by piece—as Cohn encourages him to embellish tales of his achievements, his manner of speaking becomes more grandiose; as he gains notoriety, there’s a new kind of swagger; and soon you begin to notice the exaggerated hand gestures, the tension he holds in his cupid’s bow, and the emphasis he puts on certain words as he doles out threats.
As for moments which take us beyond the Trump we’re so used to seeing on TV? Well, there are a few. One sequence in which he cries following his brother’s funeral is oddly fascinating to watch—that impenetrable wall of bravado and invincibility collapsing in a way you could never imagine in real life. There’s also another, immediately after Cohn’s death, in which he undergoes liposuction and a scalp reduction to conceal his hair loss, which nails his vanity and solipsism.
Understandably, though, it’s yet another scene that has been dominating the conversations of festival goers, one which depicts a brutal marital rape. By this point in the film, Trump has grown tired of Ivana, and when she gives him a present intended to reignite the spark, he tells her that he’s no longer attracted to her. She then berates his appearance, he grabs her, they tussle, and he throws her to the floor and forcibly has sex with her. (The sequence is a fictionalized account of an incident recorded in Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, which was later retracted. “As a woman I felt violated,” she subsequently said. “I referred to this as a rape, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.” Trump always denied the allegation.)