JOHN MALKOVICH BRINGS SCANDALOUS LIFE OF ARTIST KLIMT TO THE BIG SCREEN.Byline: BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC If you're going to go all out and put the f in "artsy" -- which is pretty much what Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz ("Time Regained") has dedicated his life to doing -- you could hardly choose a better subject than the decorative Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. Starring John Malkovich (who better?) as the effete ef·fete adj. 1. Depleted of vitality, force, or effectiveness; exhausted: the final, effete period of the baroque style. 2. , womanizing wom·an·ize v. woman·ized, woman·iz·ing, woman·iz·es v.intr. To pursue women lecherously. v.tr. To give female characteristics to; feminize. scandal maven of fin de siecle Fin` de sie´cle 1. Lit., end of the century; - mostly used adjectively in English to signify: belonging to, or characteristic of, the close of the 19th century. Vienna, "Klimt" is not, of course, your standard-issue artist biopic. It's a fantasia unfolding in the fevered, syphilis-eroded mind of the painter as he lay dying in a sitz bath at the end of World War I. The movie keeps subjectively looping in visual and narrative circular patterns, and how much of it is true is truly impossible to reckon. One thing that may seem like a fantasy but probably isn't much of one, though: Wow, Klimt sure knew a lot of naked women. The fact that he left some 30 offspring scattered around the crumbling Habsburg empire and beyond indicates that, for this aspect of the movie, Ruiz didn't need to apply too much imagination. But he went crazy in other categories. There's some nonsense about Klimt being obsessed ob·sess v. ob·sessed, ob·sess·ing, ob·sess·es v.tr. To preoccupy the mind of excessively. v.intr. with a French actress from that newfangled new·fan·gled adj. 1. New and often needlessly novel. See Synonyms at new. 2. Fond of novelty. [Middle English newfanglyd, fond of novelty, alteration of illusory medium, cinema, who has a double. Is it the fake or the real Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows) that the artist makes unforgettable love to, on the rare occasions when he can find whichever Lea it is? And we're supposed to care because ... ? The doppelganger doppelgänger Psychiatry A delusion that a double of a person or place exists elsewhere; it is related to other defects in recognition and suggests organic disease in the nondominant parietal lobe. See Depersonalization disorder, Schizophrenia. motif is but one visual gimmick in a movie giddy with lazy susan camerawork and blizzards of gold leaf (Klimt used a lot of that in his work -- get it?). There's also a mysterious government functionary (Stephen Dillane) who pops up now and then to remind the artist that, however much those decadent Parisians like him, conservative Viennese take exception to all these naked pictures. Or maybe he's just a figment fig·ment n. Something invented, made up, or fabricated: just a figment of the imagination. [Middle English, from Latin figmentum, from fingere, who comes around to let Klimt know that he's nuts. Again, we're supposed to care ... . For some reason, Ruiz directed most of the movie in English, but sometimes a prole prole n. A proletarian: "If there is hope . . . it lies in the proles" George Orwell. crashes a privileged salon to report on the war's progress in German. Then there's the bordello where the men are expected to wear gorilla masks. Aesthetic arguments get settled with a good torte in the face. And you wouldn't want to get your money's worth from Malkovich, so he's provided one arch line after another to hiss. "So it all depends on the judgment of Paris; God, how pathetic," sort of sets the tone for that whole verbal enterprise. "Klimt" is obviously not a dumb film, but it is one big ol' fruitcake fruit·cake n. 1. A heavy spiced cake containing nuts and candied or dried fruits. 2. Slang A crazy or an eccentric person: "a fruitcake under the delusion that he was Saint Nicholas" of a movie. I'm not sure I'd want to see this particular artist's life depicted in any other fashion. But I'm not sure I wanted to see this film, either. Bob Strauss (818) 713-3687 bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com KLIMT - Two and one half stars >Not rated: Nudity, sex, language. >Starring: John Malkovich, Stephen Dillane, Saffron Burrows, Nikolai Kinski. >Director: Raul Ruiz. >Running time: 1 hr. 37 min. >Playing: One Colorado, Pasadena; NuWilshire, Santa Monica. >In a nutshell: Overly aestheticized biopic saved from pretension by, well, lots of naked flesh. |
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