Monday, cigarette #3
Outside the Silliman movie lounge, 9:55pm
I wanted very badly to like Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. Steven Shainberg has all the makings to be My New Favorite Auteur: a beloved debut, an obvious knowledge of genre conventions and a willingness to subvert them, and a degree from my alma mater. But he makes enough mistakes in the first five minutes of Fur to cripple the whole thing. The main titles are ridiculous. The crucial mother character reveals herself as a caricature within three lines. ("Where did you get that dress?" "You gave it to me, mother." "I gave it to you last year.") And while it's nice to know that Nicole Kidman values her indie cred, she is mis-cast.
Diane Arbus should have been a role for Charlotte Rampling fifteen years ago, or Leelee Sobieski five years from now. Kidman manages sensitivity, but no toughness. If I were Robert Downey, Jr., playing the love interest and freak composite character, my biggest worry about having an affair with Kidman wouldn't be ruining her reputation; it would be that I might accidently break her.
Fur is a lot like Secretary, and it suffers from comparison. Each film depicts a magical dream world, but Secretary has an excuse — its narrator is in love. In Fur, it's not entirely clear what makes Diane's world so dream-like. Fear? Freakishness? Trauma? What? Some of the dialogue satisfies, and no one is a more beautiful smoker than Nicole Kidman, but checking out a Diane Arbus book from your local library would probably be a better use of your time.
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