Fur An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

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Film

Time Out New York / Issue 580 : Nov 9–15, 2006

Review

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

Dir. Steven Shainberg. 2006. R. 122mins. Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr., Ty Burrell.

I AM A CAMERA Kidman and Burrell await their photo finish.

“In photographing dwarfs, you don’t get majesty and beauty,” Susan Sontag once wrote dismissively of Diane Arbus. “You get dwarfs.” The temptation to reject this “imaginary portrait” is just as strong. Inspired by Patricia Bosworth’s thorough 1984 Arbus biography (the only one that exists of the artist), Fur takes tremendous liberties in its imagining of Arbus (Kidman) coming into her own artistically in the 1950s. On the surface, this is a commendable act: Biopics have become one of the more exhausted genres of cinema today. Those making them should be encouraged to experiment, as Todd Haynes did so memorably in picturing Karen Carpenter’s life in Superstar (his upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There, promises to be even more daring).

But problems arise when liberties become lunacies. The details of Arbus’s life that screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson plucks from Bosworth’s bio—the family furrier fortune; comfortable Upper East Side life with devoted husband-cophotographer Allan (Burrell) and two young daughters—jostle against the fictional creation of Lionel Sweeney (Downey), who’s in even more dire need of manscaping than Borat. Lionel’s aberration represents the abnormal, which Arbus made her reputation documenting. Arbus’s attraction to her hairy neighbor blooms into artistic awakening—yet Kidman, who’s been extraordinary as tortured 20th-century artist (The Hours) and unraveling pampered Manhattan matron (Birth), is distractingly tremulous in service to Fur’s script. Ultimately, Cressida Wilson’s screenplay results in something more vacuous than the biopic: the Harlequin romance. (Opens Fri; Click here for venues. See also “Imaginary friends.”)—Melissa Anderson
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