THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 10, 1997 TAG: 9702090286
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: 82 lines
ANY FILM that has Anthony Hopkins portraying Pablo Picasso is immediately worth seeing. When it is created by the venerable Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala trio (the artists responsible for ``Howard's End'' and ``Room With a View'') the stakes are made even higher.
``Surviving Picasso,'' however, is something of a vague, bitter mess - a sketch rather than a portrait. The meandering, unfocused film is accompanied by an ad campaign that claims ``only his passion for women could rival his passion for painting.'' It is an accurate warning that this is a diatribe that smacks of ``kiss and tell'' histrionics rather than the creation of art.
It is more a study of Francoise Gilot, an art student who was his mistress for 10 years. As spoken by Natascha McElhone, a young British stage actress who is making her film debut, this voiceover has the flavor of a Danielle Steel romantic potboiler. McElhone has a cool, aristocratic bearing that reminds one of the late model-nonactress Capucine. It is a vapid performance which all but sinks the film.
Picasso, played by Anthony Hopkins, hailed throughout the film as the greatest artist of the 20th century, is pictured as a selfish, domineering womanizer who does as he pleases, no matter what the consequences. The film covers the decade of his affair with Francoise but deviates to touch his many other affairs with subsequently discarded mistresses.
He meets Francoise in 1943 when she is 21 (the same age as his son) and he is 64 - during the Nazi occupation of France. There is very little drama in their relationship. She has two children with him and observes the despicable way he treats other people. Then, when he takes up with yet-another in his line of women - she leaves him. That she is the one to leave him seems happenstance rather than a reflection of any gumption on her part.
Given the fact that the film largely is seen through her eyes, not his (hence the ``surviving'' in the title), it is curious that it is not based on Gilot's impressive biography ``My Life with Picasso'' (1963), but on the inferior ``Picasso: Creator and Destroyer'' (1988) by Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington. The filmmakers, director James Ivory, producer Ishmail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, were also thwarted by the Picasso estate which refused any cooperation (understandable, given the nature of the portrayal). As a result, no actual Picasso works are seen in the film - only recreations for the purpose of dramatization.
The most ludicrous scene is one in which two women fight over Picasso in his studio while he calmly goes on painting ``Guernica.''
``I have no complaints about either of you,'' he says, smugly. ``You'll have to fight it out amongst yourselves.''
The used women are trotted in and out regularly. Picasso's first wife, the Russian dancer Olga, is portrayed as a loony by Jane Lapotaire. Marie-Therese Walter, an uneducated but sweet woman who bore him a daughter, is content to have him visit on Sundays. Played by Susannah Harker, she cuts his hair and nails and carefully stashes them away to keep voodoo evil-makers from getting them. The dangerous, cool Dora Maar (Julianne Moore) proclaims that ``without him there is nothing. After Picasso, only God.'' Diane Venora plays the final woman in his life - a woman who is willing to serve him unquestionably.
The public has, more often than not, been able to forgive artists their faults, particularly one with the genius of Picasso. Film biographies that ``explose'' the more unpleasant sides of these lives often are rejected (as with the film biographies of Babe Ruth and Charlie Chaplin).
Even more murky is the way films have portrayed artists: Jose Ferrer as Toulouse-Lautrec, Isabelle Adjani as Camille Claude, Charlton Heston as Michelangelo, Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh.
Anthony Hopkins, looking much like Picasso in his later years, makes us forget his British accent and, as he did in ``Nixon,'' convinces us that he is the character. He does all the script allows him to do.
This is a thoroughly unpleasant film, though, that is more style than substance (even though Picasso himself reasons that style comes only after death). It is best enjoyed, if at all, as a superficial travel film that allows peeks into a world we'd like to see explored more honestly. ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW
``Surviving Picasso''
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Joan Plowright,
Julianne Moore, Josh Ackland, Jane Lapotaire, Joseph Maher, Diane
Venora
Director: James Ivory
MPAA rating: R (originally received a PG, got the R because of a
single nude shot of a Picasso model)
Mal's rating: **1/2
Location: Naro Theater in Norfolk