Written by Vickie
August 26, 2010
This is not a biopic. Seriously, pay attention: this movie is made-up. Pretend.
It’s not a factual account of the life of its titular photographer and it doesn’t recount events that happened in anyone’s real life.
So, when the giant, furry humanoid moves into the Lemony Snicket-esque apartment above the family Arbus and gradually develops a beyond-curious affair with Diane, don’t furrow your brow and wonder why you never read about him in any photographic-legends coffee table books.
Director Steven Shainberg (Secretary) and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson have crafted what they describe – in concise onscreen text that appears before the movie begins, so as to avoid any uncertainty or confusion – as a dream-like tale that explores what it might have been like inside the mind of one of America’s most renowned lenswomen. Unfortunately, it turns out that their notion of the inside of Arbus’s creative mind is that it was a musty, weird, not altogether interesting or coherent place prone to random acts of insanity and the occasional bit of annoying acting.
Nicole Kidman stars as Diane Arbus and adopts the same irritating, child-like, breathy tone of voice that (in my opinion) ruined her work in films like the admittedly bad Bewitched and The Stepford Wives. (Honestly, I couldn’t take her seriously when every word falling from her lips sounded like it was being delivered by a nine-year-old.) Diane is a stylist married to accomplished commercial photographer Alan Arbus (Ty Burrell, in a nice performance), and her job is essentially to make the models or products he’s shooting look pretty. It’s all about perfection.
One day, the Arbuses get a new upstairs neighbor. He moves in shadows and keeps his face hidden with a creeeeepy cloth mask that, I’m sure, will revisit me in my nightmares at some point. His name is Lionel Sweeney, he’s a wig maker, he sounds like he just came from the Algonquin round table, he’s covered in hair over every inch of his body, and he’s played by Robert Downey Jr.
Diane is fascinated with Lionel and finds herself spending more and more time with him, but the reasons are never quite clear. Sometimes, it seems like she’s interested in him romantically (OMG, will they have sex?!); other times, it’s like she’s stumbled upon the Loch Ness monster…as evidenced by her goal of taking his portrait. Through their friendship, Diane is exposed to a whole new world: namely, one of freaks, fetishists and medical marvels. Suddenly, bored wife Diane has access to all sorts of bizarre subjects, and her life’s work is born. It’s all about the beauty of imperfection. Not surprisingly, her husband isn’t thrilled with her new hobby, her new “friends” and the abundantly hairy neighbor at the root of this perceived problem.
As mentioned, Kidman’s little-girl act wore thin pretty fast. I’d hoped that her character’s gradual empowerment as a talent to be reckoned with would somehow result in a positive change, delivery-wise, but no. Downey is okay, but his Lionel comes off as a bit of a creepier, kinkier version of Ron Perlman’s Vincent from the Beauty and the Beast TV series…only shorter and with better clothes. Their escapades, while colorful, don’t resonate and seem assembled for no other reason that to present scene after scene of “Diane sees something shocking.” They feel a little hollow and I didn’t find myself connecting with either character, getting invested with either of their life paths or caring about the inevitable downer of an outcome for them both.
The overall thought I kept having was “meh.” I know I wasn’t supposed to learn much about the woman behind the legendary pictures, and I didn’t. But I still felt unsatisfied. So, despite my love for Shainberg’s previous film, I found myself wishing that he’d applied his style to an actual biography of Arbus instead.
