Stars: Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr

Director: Steven Shainberg

Summary:

Was Diane Arbus a brilliant innovator whose photographs captured the beauty in the most desperate of subjects? Or was she an exploiter of ‘freaks,’ shilling pictures of the deformed as a modern-day sideshow? Regardless of where one stands on her work, few can argue its impact on the art world. In FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS, director Steven Shainberg makes a bold first attempt at bringing the artist to the big screen. The film opens with Arbus (Nicole Kidman) living as a depressed housewife in a ritzy Park Avenue apartment. Assisting her husband Allen (Ty Burrell) in his photography studio, Arbus helps him shoot ads for women's magazines. One night, after spying her mysterious next door neighbour--a sharply dressed man with a hood over his face--Arbus decides to heed her husband's advice to step out and take some photos of her own. She climbs the stairs to her neighbor's apartment with the intention of taking his portrait, and there she meets Lionel (Robert Downey, Jr.). Lionel suffers from hypertrichosis, a disease that causes thick hair to grow over every inch of his body, including his face. He and Arbus strike up a flirtatious friendship, and he introduces her to the underworld of New York. They party with dwarves, dominatrixes, and circus performers--all future subjects of Arbus photographs. Arbus's marriage soon begins to fall apart, and her relationship with Lionel builds towards a traumatic, but transformative, end.

In an unusual twist, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson has completely fabricated the character of Lionel, and his ensuing effect on Arbus. He is Wilson's fantastical idea of what might have spurred Arbus's metamorphosis from repressed housewife to daring documentarian of those living on the fringe. As the title states, this isn't a biopic--it's an "imaginary portrait," and while some might take exception to FUR's surreal spin on reality, others might find the unconventional film a fitting tribute to the always unconventional artist.

WIN DVDs by rating this DVD

Average User Rating:

WIN DVDS by being amongst the first to review this DVD. Reviewing DVDs earns you bonus entries and lets you WIN DVDs!Please login before reviewing this DVD. If you're a new user, register for free and enter to WIN FREE DVDs!

Modeled loosely on Patricia Bosworth's 1984 biography, Fur opens with an independent, working Diane Arbus (Nicole Kidman), free of the familial restraints that previously prevented her from making art. Flashing back three months, the viewer comes to learn that she has just left her husband and children to photographically investigate her fetishes through observing the extraordinary. When Lionel (Robert Downey Jr.), a wig-maker who suffers from hypertrichosis, or excessive hair growth, moves into Arbus's apartment building with his entourage and basement full of carnival props, Arbus is seduced by this opportunity to visually feast on freaks. The split with her conventional family becomes inevitable. Confusing love with her desire to make art, Arbus is overwhelmed when Lionel perishes, though its made clear to the viewer that this event provides Arbus necessary artistic impetus.

Early scenes establishing Arbus's distaste for society parties, such as the fur fashion show her parents host, her boredom during her husband's dull, ridiculous commercial photo shoots, and her initial fascination with Lionel and his bizarre friends are strange and funny, successfully separating Arbus from the 'average' people surrounding her. But as Lionel and Arbus fall in love, pretentious whispering replaces their regular conversations, and overacting spoils Lionel's death scene, in which they both float dramatically through the ocean, followed by Arbus crying in the surf like a weenie. Arbus desperately huffing air from a life raft Lionel inflated before he died is completely cheesy. The tortured artist myth has, once again, been pushed too far.

For a film that has such fine costuming, production design, and cinematography, it's a shame that Fur succumbs to that Hollywood convention of reducing the entire plot to a tragic love story. For a project with so much potential, and with so many Arbus fans eagerly awaiting this tribute to the great photographer, it's unfortunate that Fur falls flat, due mostly to injected sentimental melodrama in scenes where it has no place. If Arbus sought to expel saccharine emotionality from portrait photography, then it's odd that a biopic dedicated to her memory would be so unabashedly corny. --Trinie Dalton

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Deleted scenes, Documentary, Director's commentary, Trailer
Year:	2006
Release Date:	July 23, 2007
Runtime:	117 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	E D V 9473
Keywords:	English, General, Portrait, Drama, Diane, Fur, Imaginary, Arbus
Genre:	Drama