Fur Review From Hollywood Reporter Options

[marilyn]

Fur Review from Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/revie...t_id=1003252154

Fur
By Kirk Honeycutt

"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.

Bottom line: An affected fantasia that unsuccessfully tries to conjure Diane Arbus out of a strident urban fairy tale.

[skankyoldwhore]

Thanks, oh well .

[RedSatinDoll]

Thanks, oh well .

You were asking in the Rome premiere thread, skanky...and here it is.

I always like to remind myself that any review is a single opinion, and just that - we've read plenty of reviews already that were complimentary.

[skankyoldwhore]

You were asking in the Rome premiere thread, skanky...and here it is.

I always like to remind myself that any review is a single opinion, and just that - we've read plenty of reviews already that were complimentary.

Absolutely.

[marilyn]

Thanks, oh well .

You're welcome. Skanky, Honeycutt’s review sounds very much like the review by Todd McCarthy from Variety. Do they usually watch films from the same angle/perspective? They even share the same thought that Diane Arbus at age 33 should have shown some hints that she was going to commit suicide 15 years later!! Maybe they can both tell me what I will do 10 years from now.

[skankyoldwhore]

You're welcome.    Skanky, Honeycutt’s review sounds very much like the review by Todd McCarthy from Variety.  Do they usually watch films from the same angle/perspective? They even share the same thought that Diane Arbus at age 33 should have shown some hints that she was going to commit suicide 15 years later!!  Maybe they can both tell me what I will do 10 years from now.

I know, it is weird, isn't it? Apparently, the real Diane was never happy! This is a movie on just 3 months of her life and they don't seem to get it. Considering the shock of the real Arbus'death, what are they talking about? I guess this is another Birth.

[BabyNick]

Thanx 4 da review Marilyn

~Viviana~

[Mariposa]

Thank you, Marilyn! I think this may come to an art house in my area, so I'll have to keep an eye out for it.

[Grace Margaret M...]

their marquee value will not expand "Fur" beyond urban art houses

the question is, does this film want to reach a large audience, was it made for that? i don't think so, the critic then condems the film for being too arty... oh well

Allan, correctly sizing up Lionel as a rival for his wife's favors, immediately grows a beard.

that was the funniest part of the review.

i think we will have to wait a few days until more reviews drop in. let's hope they are nice

[skankyoldwhore]

the question is, does this film want to reach a large audience, was it made for that? i don't think so, the critic then condems the film for being too arty... oh well
  that was the funniest part of the review.

i think we will have to wait a few days until more reviews drop in. let's hope they are nice

I won't bet on it GMM, anything that goes out of a genre despite being of the genre seems to irk most crititcs especially if the "conceit" isn't something they can explain away, they start using the word "pretentious" to describe the movie and Fur seems to be that way. A few critics will see it for what it is.

I believe Shainberg stated in one of the blurbs that the movie is unlikely to appeal to AMPAS and the mainstream audience.