KLIMT

John Malkovich, American accent inexplicably intact, plays one of the most famous European artists of the modern era.

One of the things I love about John Malkovich, bless his heart, is that he has become so revered as an actor that he can pretty much do whatever the hell he wants in a film. In Klimt, an apparently highly-fictionalized biopic of the famous Austrian painter from the turn of the 20th century, Malkovich, American accent fully intact, plays Gustav Klimt himself, seemingly as an exercise of simply showing up on a film set and then having everyone involved, actors, director, set designers, producers, etc., make out with him just for being involved. How does he do this? It is as baffling, especially as Klimt is bordering upon excruciating to sit through, and is baffling and narratively muddy as a college art school project.

According to Klimt, Gustav the artist was completely irresistible to women. They would throw themselves at him at social parties, and his models would be so lucky as to be hand-picked to stay after-hours for a little somethin' somethin'. Despite lovers all over the place, and children he is aware and unaware of here and there, Klimt still has a loyal woman at home (Veronica Ferres), though their relationship has become chaste.

Though he is on top of the art world during the time this movie portrays (roughly the last 15 or 20 years of his life), he is also seemingly going mad. First of all, there is a mysterious woman named Lea (Saffron Burrows) who has commissioned a painting of herself. Or is she more than one woman? Has Klimt slept with Lea, or the other Lea? Who the heck is she, and who is the young Duke who spies them through a one-way window in their intimacies? And finally, who is this guy called The Secretary (Stephen Dillane) who is full of advice and commentary on Klimt's life and work, but might exist only in Klimt's head?

Klimt is certainly a gorgeous-looking production. The beautiful women, especially, look like they may have stepped out of one of Klimt's own gold-flecked paintings. But speaking of paintings, there is surprisingly little time in the film spent on the artist's artwork. Maybe they didn't get the rights to show the most famous stuff, but the closest allusion there is to his most famous work like "The Kiss" or "Judith and the Head of Holofernes" is a scene where he is daubing tissue-thin gold sheets to a canvas (while we don't get to even see what he is working on).

However, there was one thing I did thoroughly enjoy about this annoying and tedious film: Nikolai Kinski. Yes, Nikolai is the son of crazy-man Klaus, and I knew it as soon as he showed up on screen. Nikolai plays a creepy, fluttery-handed, disheveled young man who sketches in a sketchbook, shrieks like a hyena when he laughs grotesquely, and is the only person who visits Klimt in the hospital when he is dying of syphilis. Let's just say that Kinski lets his freak flag fly. Alas, watching an abstract piece of Kinski's character walk from hospital room to hospital room, peeking on the unfortunate occupants and reacting inappropriately, would have made for a much more interesting film.