FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS
US, 2006, 121 minutes, Colour.
Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr, Ty Burrell, Harris Yulin, Jane Alexander, Emmy Clarke, Genevieve Mc Carthy.
Directed by Steven Shainberg.
The title sends us in the right direction to appreciate this film – although many audiences had difficulties with it, assessing it as a biography and finding it not only wanting but too strange. We usually have no difficulty with a photo portrait or, especially, a painted portrait if the artist exaggerates some characteristics, distorts reality in some ways, adds symbolic touches which may or may not have been part of the subject’s life. Portraiture is not meant to be an exact art.
However, with a film portrait, because it is presented in moving images, within some kind of narrative, the a priori expectation is that a portrait will be real and we want accuracy of detail. Fur is a fascinating example of a portrait from the imagination of the director into the imagination of its subject. While the screenplay draws on a biography, it makes clear at beginning and end, that it is a subjective exploration and that characters, especially the key character of Lionel, as well as family details are not meant to be taken literally.
Diane Arbus had a short career as a photographyer but is considered one of the most innovative of American photographers. Her subjects were frequently outsiders to society. She committed suicide in 1971. She is portrayed here by Nicole Kidman.
What writer and director Steve Shainberg (whose previous film was the psychodrama on power and sexuality, Secretary) has done is to provide something of a ‘realistic’ setting for his fantasy exploration (New York, 1958) and then pursued it as if it were his dream about Diane Arbus and as if it were really her dream.
While we see her with her husband, photographer Alan Arbus, and her children, we also meet her dominating and snobbish parents who were fur trade millionaires. Diane is a reticent, somewhat childlike wife, mother and assistant to her husband.
One night a cloaked and masked figure arrives to live in an upstairs apartment. He is concealed like the Elephant Man. It gradually emerges that he has a condition that makes him almost totally and rapidly hirsute. He has been an attraction in a circus and mixes with his many friends who are considered ‘freaks’. It becomes a Beauty and the Beast story as Diane becomes more and more intrigued with Lionel (Robert Downey Jr who suffered from psoriasis) and his life and friends become hers – though her family are self-conscious and sometimes embarrassed, except her youngest daughter.
But Lionel is no man to be pitied. He is quite strong-minded, runs a successful wig business. But his lungs are deteriorating. Diane opens up to his very direct questioning, revealing episodes of sexual awakening when she was young and some repressed feelings. This new world entices her into a different life, especially as she falls in love with Lionel to the dismay of her devoted husband (Ty Birrell).
The film dips in and out of ‘reality’ but spends most of its time in the exotic looking world of Lionel’s apartment, like a world created by Diane’s unconscious where Lionel is a strong, powerful, wild and animal-looking Animus figure for her, a figure who could lead her to wholeness – except that he is dying and wants her to be present at his death.
So, this is no biography. Rather, it is a blend of the real, the fantasy, the dream, the psychodrama – an invitation to enter into the imagination of Diane Arbus. Nicole Kidman has already played an ultrasensitive and delicate creative artist, her Virginia Woolf in The Hours. She brings a tentativeness to her character here that is transformed to strength and will lead her – to places she never anticipated.
1.Audience knowledge of Diane Arbus? Her life, career, influence in photography? Art and life? How important was a knowledge of her life and work – or not?
2.The title and its being an imaginary portrait, Diane Arbus’s imagination, the audience imagination? The imagination of the writer-director? How related to her actual life was this imaginary portrait? To her career? The images of Beauty and the Beast? How much fantasy, how much reality? A psychodrama? The life of dreams, the style of dreams?
3.The context of her actual life, of her family, her parents, husband and children, her work? The 1958 reality? New York City?
4.Diane Arbus and her photography, themes of outsiders, ‘freaks’? Her fascination, her intellectual appreciation, her emotional response? The setting of this fantasy before her career? A pre-career fantasy? An explanation of her visual and emotional imagination? The credibility?
5.The framework: the bus, the arrival, wearing the coat of hair, the nudism colony, encountering the people, discussing with them, her reticence about stripping, the end, her being with the group, sitting with the girl on the park chair? Discussions about photography?
6.The flashbacks of imagination? The introduction to Diane, to Allan, to her girls? Her life up till then? Assisting Allan in his career, the photography? Arranging the scenes? Her parents, their wealth, domination? The opening ceremony, her reaction to being busy, to the guests, to her parents, her speech and the questions from the reporters, her breakdown? Her mother’s taunt about last year’s dress? Her weeping, being on the balcony, seeing the man looking at her, her thoughts about exposing herself? Telling Allan and her being ashamed?
7.Lionel, his arrival, Diane watching him, her curiosity, his being masked? Going upstairs? The hair and the blockage in the pipes, with Grace and getting it out, the puzzle? Going upstairs, the peephole? Her being drawn upstairs, Lionel being an Animus figure? The possibility of wholeness for her?
8.The portrait of Lionel, the audience first seeing his eyes, the moment of revelation that he was covered in hair? His physical and medical condition? Robert Downey Jr and his strength of presence and performance? His behaving normally, his range of friends, making the wigs, the clients, his work in his room? The issue of his hair, the condition, his being ridiculed when young, shaving and its being itchy? His life, the carnival, the posters and signs in his room? Diane’s response and acceptance? Taking her out, the naked people dancing and its effect on her? His friends, the club, the ‘freaks’? The club, the singers? The visit of Lionel to Allan and the family, at the meal, tension? Lionel and his being calm and normal? Their having to cope, Lionel aware of what was going on? The birthday party, Diane’s parents? His physical health, his breathing, the collapse of his lungs? Encouraging Diane with her photos? His love for her, the sexual encounter? His request that she be at his death? The shaving? The bequeathing of the album? His going into the sea?
9.Diane’s family, her parents and their wealth, the fur trade, their snobbery? Demanding on Diane?
10.Allan and the girls, Allan’s work, his fame, his spreads for advertisements in the magazines? His loving Diane, his birthday speech to her? The bonds, the work, the 60s images, getting a new assistant? The difficulties, the differences between them? Allowing Diane to go out, explore, her bringing the steps down from the attic, bringing Lionel and his friends down into their life, his declaring that he wanted to be normal? The effect of this experience? Grace, her growing resentment and embarrassment? Sophie and her acceptance?
11.The different characters, their being glimpsed via Diane, the various personalities, their being in carnivals, considered freaks? The girl without any arms, the giant, the dwarves, playing cards, singing, dancing, the transvestite? The party?
12.Diane’s photos, with the camera, tentative, Allan and Grace finding the spools, developing them, the look, the staircases and doors?
13.Lionel’s death, Diane being with him, going into the sea, grieving on the shore?
14.The title, the issue of fur and hair, mystery, wild beast, Beauty and the Beast, the sensual aspect of the hair, the fetish, the shaving?
15.The nature of a cinema imaginary portrait compared with that of a painting or a sculpture? The imagination in narrative and moving images, sounds and music?
