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Visual and aural extravagance

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (English)

Director: Steven Shainberg

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr., Ty Burrell

For many American critics, “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” is a cosmic disappointment because it does what its title says, fictionalise the story to an extent that the real Diane Arbus is never really present in the portrait.

If one leaves aside this question, however, (particularly easy for the Indian viewer who has probably never been exposed to the neurotic, freakish reality of Arbus’s photography) one can find much merit in “Fur”.

Directed by Steven Shainberg, “Fur” transforms a biography by Patricia Bosworth into a 1950s Beauty and the Beast tale, giving credit for Arbus’s (Nicole Kidman) initial artistic explorations to her excessively hirsute neighbour Lionel Sweeney (Robert Downey Jr.), who helps her see the freakish in the quotidian and the quotidian in the freakish.

At the start of the film, Arbus lives an artistically and personally shackled life as her photographer-husband Allan Arbus’s (Ty Burrel) assistant. Early in the film, she chokes in the face of excessive attention at a party and then goes onto the porch and unbuttons her dress to expose herself to the world. All of that changes when she climbs, like an unwitting teenager in a horror film, to the magical circus-world of Sweeney, and there discovers that it is ok to not be normal.

The content of the film does struggle at points, particularly in the middle when Sweeney is drawn into the ordinary world of Arbus’s family. However, even in its most difficult moments, “Fur” holds together for two reasons, the visual and aural extravagance that fills the film and the moving performances by its two leads. Shainberg and cinematographer Bill Pope fill the film with almost an excess of sensual close-ups and tight but luscious still frames that help hold the film close to the skin.

RAKESH MEHAR

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