Z/Web

I’m not sure what to make of this. I’d heard of it — Nicole Kidman plays the famous photographer lead — but it’s definitely not for many tastes. It’s not a straight biography. The opening title card says that and explains it’s an “imaginary portrait” but doesn’t explain what that is either, so I don’t know if what happened here was real or not.

I expected something on the surreal side, like a Salvador Dali painting come to life. I thought there’d be fantasy sequences and oddities that inspired this artist. Instead the film plays out like the old Beauty and the Beast television show.

The story’s really pretty linear and ordinary. Diane Arbus is a daughter of wealth who married a family photographer and she’s his assistant. She’s bored and weird, and when a mysterious masked man moves in upstairs she’s fascinated. Eventually she meets him on the premise of wanting to photograph him, and he turns out to be a former circus “wolfman” (covered with hair). She isn’t repulsed but finds him intriguing. He introduces her to the world of the bizarre: circus freaks and other oddities. She eventually neglects her family to have an affair with him, but apparently also launches the start of her photography career.

There’s much I really liked. The moody sets and photography and music and performances are all wonderfully done, but though there’s a profound sense of something about to happen, nothing ever does (at least that I could tell). And though I liked the characters, I never really learned much about Diane. It is compelling enough that I wanted to know more — but the film left me frustrated because it didn’t give me that.

The film’s most fatal flaw for me, as someone unfamiliar with Diane’s work, is that we never really get to see her photography. The story mostly happens before she became famous, so in a way that makes sense, and I gather that she apparently took pictures of weird stuff and helped “redefine the twentieth century’s perspective of beauty,” but throughout the film I kept thinking, “This would probably have more impact and make more sense if I knew her work or who the hell she is.” Most biography-type films try to give us insight into the artist and their work, but this only hints at it. We see she’s interested in the weird, but we never learn why. We never know what makes her tick.

In the end I was left disappointed and unsatisfied, confused, saddened by the tragic storyline, and uncertain what I was supposed to get out of this. What was the point? She was an unusual artist with a weird bent. Yeah? What else is new? Doesn’t that describe every artist to an extent? What made her special? I liked that they were trying to do something a little different than a straight biography here, but this needed more biographical elements to make sense and give it a foundation, and I also think it was very weak on the fantastical. It promoted itself as being strange and bizarre and yet there wasn’t that much of that. Probably this is a movie only for Diane Arbus fans.

I usually love black comedies like this and wanted to like this one. It has a terrific premise: a shy nobody who happens to be killing women who resemble his love interest who ignores him, accidentally wins a $36 million lottery when his mother redeems the ticket left behind by his latest victim, and the newfound wealth means his love is suddenly interested in him and they get married.

I figured a fun romp as he plays cat and mouse with the police and his new wife, but that’s not what happens at all.

The first half of the movie is pretty good. I liked the setup of the characters, the new money and wife helping the shy guy to blossom, and the way the guy’s gold-digger lover is an awkward fit and he just can’t see that.

Unfortunately, the film starts to wander after that, unsure of whether it’s a comedy or drama or thriller. The wife finds out about the murders and goes a bit crazy herself and the film’s just too weird. We aren’t sure what’s going on or why, and nothing makes much sense. There’s awkward editing that helps with this confusion. For instance, when he’s murdering a maid while on their honeymoon and the wife sees, she only sees the woman’s feet, not really enough to tell he’s killing the woman. I thought at first she thought he was having an affair — that would be the more natural assumption — and that explained her sudden change of attitude toward him. But later I realized that she knew he was a murderer but was staying with him anyway, apparently for the money. Very odd. (My rule would be: if a character does something of the norm, you need to make what they do crystal clear to the audience, since it’s already weird and unexpected. Don’t play coy editing games in that situation.)

We limp to an equally unsatisfying ending that doesn’t resolve much and leaves us more confused than ever about their relationship. In the end, this is uneven and awkward. There are some neat moments and good performances (the wife and killer are terrific), but it all acts like it’s profound when it’s really not. Bummer.