Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus announces itself as a biography by another means. This portrait of visionary artist-photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) is a fairy tale that, as opening titles proclaim, "invents characters and situations that reach beyond reality to express what might have been Arbus' inner experience on her extraordinary path." Thus, Arbus' startling discovery of her rich imagination becomes a metaphorical Alice in Wonderland adventure in which she falls not down a rabbit hole but up a stairway into the strange abode of a beguiling fellow tenant in a New York apartment building in 1958. It sounds more interesting than it is.
The conceit by director Steven Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson is infected by the extremely banal notion that the photographer's famous fascination with outsiders -- transvestites, circus performers, people with physical or psychological abnormalities -- means that "Fur" must be a freak show. While Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. give brave performances in this insular and slow-moving tale, their marquee value will not expand "Fur" beyond urban art houses.
The filmmakers take known facts about Diane Arbus and load these into a fictional character called Diane Arbus. She is the privileged, obedient, repressed daughter of a wealthy New York furrier and his wife -- Harris Yulin and Jane Alexander, pitch perfect as nose-in-the-air snobs. Married with two daughters, Diane has achieved success in the fashion world, with her husband, Allan (Ty Burrell), acting as photographer and she as his stylist.
The arrival of a new tenant in the flat above the Arbus' home and photography studio intrigues Diane. At first sight, he looks like H.G. Wells' Invisible Man, bundled in a hat and coat and wearing a mask. When she eventually ventures up the stairs she learns why. Lionel Sweeney (Downey) has a rare condition that covers his entire body in fur. This is the first of the movie's blatant jokes: Furrier's daughter meets the Fur Man.
Fascinated, Diane all but abandons family life to enter into the Fur Man's world. He takes her on an outing to watch a dominatrix entertain a client and to parties with circus "freak" pals. She invites Lionel to supper with her stunned family. Allan, correctly sizing up Lionel as a rival for his wife's favors, immediately grows a beard.
The movie depicts Lionel's half-hidden, half-forbidden world as a secret, superior society where art, imagination and dark obsessions can flourish. You wish that filmmakers who spent years developing a film and reportedly months in the editing room struggling to find their picture would acknowledge that real art springs from hard work and sweat, not secret societies.
Kidman gives Diane a wide-eyed yet tentative demeanor as she moves through this wonderland. The role is rather reactive for a title heroine and contains nary a hint that this woman one day will kill herself. Downey, looking a bit like Jean Marais' furry anti-hero in Jean Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast, delivers a smart, scene-stealing performance with his voice and eyes.
But "Fur" is a misfire by the talented people who four years ago gave us Secretary, whose tongue-in-cheek approach might have served this film better, taking the edge off much of its pretensions. Bill Pope's resourceful camera and Amy Danger's upstairs/downstairs contrasting quarters cannot disguise the fact that we seldom venture from these tiresome flats.
FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS
Picturehouse
Picturehouse and River Road Entertainment present an Edward R. Pressman Film Corp./Bonnie Timmermann/Iron Films'Vox3 production
Credits:
Director: Steven Shainberg
Screenwriter: Erin Cressida Wilson
Inspired by the book by: Patricia Bosworth
Producers: William Pohlad, Laura Bickford, Bonnie Timmermann, Andrew Fierberg: Executive producers: Edward R. Pressman, Alessandro Camon, Michael Roban
Director of photography: Bill Pope
Production designer: Amy Danger
Music: Carter Burwell
Co-producers: Gary Robert Bryne, Mary Jane Skalski, Patricia Bosworth, Vincent Farrell III
Costume designer: Mark Bridges
Editors: Keilo Deguchi, Kristina Boden
Cast:
Diane Arbus: Nicole Kidman
Lionel Sweeney: Robert Downey Jr.
Allan Arbus: Ty Burell
David Nemerov: Harris Yulin
Gertrude Nemerov: Jane Alexander
Grace Arbus: Emmy Clarke
Sophie Arbus: Genevieve McCarthy
Running time -- 121 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
The conceit by director Steven Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson is infected by the extremely banal notion that the photographer's famous fascination with outsiders -- transvestites, circus performers, people with physical or psychological abnormalities -- means that "Fur" must be a freak show. While Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. give brave performances in this insular and slow-moving tale, their marquee value will not expand "Fur" beyond urban art houses.
The filmmakers take known facts about Diane Arbus and load these into a fictional character called Diane Arbus. She is the privileged, obedient, repressed daughter of a wealthy New York furrier and his wife -- Harris Yulin and Jane Alexander, pitch perfect as nose-in-the-air snobs. Married with two daughters, Diane has achieved success in the fashion world, with her husband, Allan (Ty Burrell), acting as photographer and she as his stylist.
The arrival of a new tenant in the flat above the Arbus' home and photography studio intrigues Diane. At first sight, he looks like H.G. Wells' Invisible Man, bundled in a hat and coat and wearing a mask. When she eventually ventures up the stairs she learns why. Lionel Sweeney (Downey) has a rare condition that covers his entire body in fur. This is the first of the movie's blatant jokes: Furrier's daughter meets the Fur Man.
Fascinated, Diane all but abandons family life to enter into the Fur Man's world. He takes her on an outing to watch a dominatrix entertain a client and to parties with circus "freak" pals. She invites Lionel to supper with her stunned family. Allan, correctly sizing up Lionel as a rival for his wife's favors, immediately grows a beard.
The movie depicts Lionel's half-hidden, half-forbidden world as a secret, superior society where art, imagination and dark obsessions can flourish. You wish that filmmakers who spent years developing a film and reportedly months in the editing room struggling to find their picture would acknowledge that real art springs from hard work and sweat, not secret societies.
Kidman gives Diane a wide-eyed yet tentative demeanor as she moves through this wonderland. The role is rather reactive for a title heroine and contains nary a hint that this woman one day will kill herself. Downey, looking a bit like Jean Marais' furry anti-hero in Jean Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast, delivers a smart, scene-stealing performance with his voice and eyes.
But "Fur" is a misfire by the talented people who four years ago gave us Secretary, whose tongue-in-cheek approach might have served this film better, taking the edge off much of its pretensions. Bill Pope's resourceful camera and Amy Danger's upstairs/downstairs contrasting quarters cannot disguise the fact that we seldom venture from these tiresome flats.
FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS
Picturehouse
Picturehouse and River Road Entertainment present an Edward R. Pressman Film Corp./Bonnie Timmermann/Iron Films'Vox3 production
Credits:
Director: Steven Shainberg
Screenwriter: Erin Cressida Wilson
Inspired by the book by: Patricia Bosworth
Producers: William Pohlad, Laura Bickford, Bonnie Timmermann, Andrew Fierberg: Executive producers: Edward R. Pressman, Alessandro Camon, Michael Roban
Director of photography: Bill Pope
Production designer: Amy Danger
Music: Carter Burwell
Co-producers: Gary Robert Bryne, Mary Jane Skalski, Patricia Bosworth, Vincent Farrell III
Costume designer: Mark Bridges
Editors: Keilo Deguchi, Kristina Boden
Cast:
Diane Arbus: Nicole Kidman
Lionel Sweeney: Robert Downey Jr.
Allan Arbus: Ty Burell
David Nemerov: Harris Yulin
Gertrude Nemerov: Jane Alexander
Grace Arbus: Emmy Clarke
Sophie Arbus: Genevieve McCarthy
Running time -- 121 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/12/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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