Whenever a new biopic comes out, critics jump all over each other pointing out the inaccuracies. Ray Charles never stopped doing drugs. John Nash was mean. Cole Porter was gay. There can be no such hand-wringing over "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus." Steven Shainberg ("Secretary") has taken the bare bones of the photographer's life and gone wild with them.
"It comes really out of my lack of affection for straight ahead biopics," Shainberg said in an interview. "Those films show you the greatest hits of a person's life, and essentially tell you things you largely know, and that to me is kind of an empty exercise from a filmmaking point of view, but it's also an empty experience for the viewer." No matter how much you know about Diane Arbus, it won't be repeated here.
This much is true: Arbus' parents were wealthy Jewish furriers. She worked as an assistant for her commercial photographer husband, Allan (Ty Burrell). In 1958, at the age of 35, she left him and their children and began taking her own pictures - intimate portraits of giants, prostitutes, transvestites and other "unusual people."
How did this nice 50s housewife become a fellow traveler in the seedy underworld? That's the question "Fur" tries to answer, but not by stringing together the facts. Instead, Shainberg crafts a monster that both embodies and facilitates Arbus' transformation: a mysterious new neighbor named Lionel (Robert Downey Jr.). Lionel is afflicted with something called hypertrichosis - his entire face and body are covered in hair.
Arbus already feels like an outsider in her own life; Lionel introduces her to genuine weirdos. They watch an old man slow-dance with a topless dominatrix. Arbus is fascinated. "Look at his socks," she whispers. Before long, as Allan says, "There's a hole in my ceiling and fucking freaks coming down it."
Downey Jr., probably the only actor who can successfully flirt through full-body fur, makes Lionel irresistible, even as you wonder whether he's real. Kidman (who has looked increasingly unreal on red carpets lately), does what she does best - a thoughtful, trembly wariness. But Arbus still comes off as an unwitting wanderer, not the intelligent and purposeful woman she was.
"It comes really out of my lack of affection for straight ahead biopics," Shainberg said in an interview. "Those films show you the greatest hits of a person's life, and essentially tell you things you largely know, and that to me is kind of an empty exercise from a filmmaking point of view, but it's also an empty experience for the viewer." No matter how much you know about Diane Arbus, it won't be repeated here.
This much is true: Arbus' parents were wealthy Jewish furriers. She worked as an assistant for her commercial photographer husband, Allan (Ty Burrell). In 1958, at the age of 35, she left him and their children and began taking her own pictures - intimate portraits of giants, prostitutes, transvestites and other "unusual people."
How did this nice 50s housewife become a fellow traveler in the seedy underworld? That's the question "Fur" tries to answer, but not by stringing together the facts. Instead, Shainberg crafts a monster that both embodies and facilitates Arbus' transformation: a mysterious new neighbor named Lionel (Robert Downey Jr.). Lionel is afflicted with something called hypertrichosis - his entire face and body are covered in hair.
Arbus already feels like an outsider in her own life; Lionel introduces her to genuine weirdos. They watch an old man slow-dance with a topless dominatrix. Arbus is fascinated. "Look at his socks," she whispers. Before long, as Allan says, "There's a hole in my ceiling and fucking freaks coming down it."
Downey Jr., probably the only actor who can successfully flirt through full-body fur, makes Lionel irresistible, even as you wonder whether he's real. Kidman (who has looked increasingly unreal on red carpets lately), does what she does best - a thoughtful, trembly wariness. But Arbus still comes off as an unwitting wanderer, not the intelligent and purposeful woman she was.
