I was expecting to have to wait for the DVD in order to see Fur.  But a few weeks back the local arthouse theatre had it and I got a chance to see it.  However, this is good news for me as I'd really like to see it again.

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Beauty and the beasts
Friday, February 9, 2007
By David Elliott Copley

“Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” has that qualifying add-on in its title, then a scroll that avows it is not “historical biography,” and another statement with the end credits. It’s as if the makers are nervous about having made a brilliant movie to celebrate a real life.

“Fur” reunites writer Erin Cressida Wilson with director Steven Shainberg. They made “Secretary,” a sparky oddball with ace work by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Nicole Kidman is just as terrific in this film, playing photographer Diane Arbus, maybe surpassing her Oscar-winning Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.”

Wilson, who truly conceived this script during the late phase of her pregnancy, drew on Patricia Bosworth’s esteemed Arbus biography, and Bosworth was a producer. But her fresh take is often inspired. The focus is young Arbus of the 1950s, a sort of finishing-school fawn who helps with her husband’s advertising photography, filmed by Shainberg in mildly mocking setups.

Diane (“Dee-ane,” she insists) has two girls and loves her husband, but is going a bit cuckoo in her classy Manhattan nest; something is greatly needed beyond cocktails and Adlai Stevenson. It’s her inner cuckoo that saves Diane — she is a voyeur with a kink, her antennae tingling for nudists, outsiders, “freaks.”

In the film’s magical idea, boldness arrives upstairs. The new neighbor is “Lionel the Wigmaker,” who in public wraps up like the Elephant Man. But in his dream-cave studio, Lionel really lets his hair down — a dense crop of it furs his body, crowned by a lush, da Vincian beard. And he has darting, poignant eyes and the urbane, on-guard voice of Robert Downey Jr.

Diane cracks loose by peeping at Lionel, then joining him as friend. It’s just perfect that plumbing is what first brings them together, for their upstairs alliance is really subterranean — a soul convergence with a high erotic charge.

Never before has “Take off your camera” been a come-on. Diane is so smitten by Lionel’s resplendent weirdness that she keeps delaying his portrait. She gladly enters his coterie of marginals, including circus folk and even stranger. But the movie isn’t about the famous Arbus ark of the alienated, it’s about her life opening into her art.

There are a few hackneyed touches (like the sea to represent freedom and death) but many exciting ones. Also, witty: Diane’s father (Harris Yulin) being a rich furrier; Lionel disrobing but still looking clad (in fur); the jealous husband, Allan (Ty Burrell), growing an envious beard.

Diane loves Allan, yet her new fire is covert passion for Lionel, the Hairy Other who opens her inwardly. She’s making a new realm for her muse, incubated by the old apartment building. Big thanks to Bill Pope’s gorgeous imagery, the design by Amy Danger and Nick Ralbersky, also decor, costuming, makeup and Carter Burwell’s sensual score topped by classic saxes sidewinding through “Tangerine.”

Look at the fated Lionel and you forget silly Wolfman films. No, he’s closer to the haughty, leonine Beast of Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast.” Kidman is a special Beauty, and her magnetism pivots the film’s creative tripod: Arbus (explored), David Lynch (echoed) and Cocteau (saluted).

Not since “Dreamchild” (1985) probed Lewis Carroll has a movie taken such fertile liberties with an artist, to stir our grateful gratification. To call “Fur” one of the year’s best seems a little diminishing — it’s a classic.

“Fur” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Palace theatre as part of the Art Film Series. Admission is $4. The film is rated R for nudity, sexuality and language.

I enjoyed it very much.  It's another one of those movie's that one just sits there and watches and let it tell it's own story.  The beach scene is beautiful and has great significance and that's all I'll say so as not to spoil it for anyone.

I haven't posted over in the Fur movie topic.  I guess I should add my view over there.

* Audio commentary with director Steven Shainberg
* Deleted scenes with optional commentary by director Steven Shainberg
* The theatrical trailer