The
theme this week seems to be “minor role in underwhelming biopic of a famous
artiste.” While ultimately a very
different film than John and Yoko: A Love Story, and I think a somewhat better
one, Modigliani is definitely cut
from the same cloth.
Rather
than a bigger-than-Jesus rock star, our protagonist this time around is an
artist struggling with art vs. commercial success, along with love and
anti-Semitism. Modigliani, an Italian-born
Jewish painter, is every bit the starving artist: brilliant, unappreciated, substance-abusing,
romantic, and slowly succumbing to tuberculosis. He spends the film angsting over his
lover/muse and battling his rivals in the post-WWI Parisian art community (it’s
probably so depressing trying to compete with frickin’ Picasso for patronage.)
The
famous person PC plays this time is Jean Cocteau. Cocteau is more of a writer than a painter,
but he has a great love of art and holds a fair amount of weight in the art
scene. He runs in Picasso’s crowd and,
as such, associates with Modigliani but isn’t really on his side.
It’s a
small, background-ish role, but it seems like PC was probably delighted to play
it. His Cocteau is stylish and
exuberant, reveling in the creative, artistic world he inhabits. While a lot of actors can look anachronistic
in certain period pieces, PC fits perfectly into the 1919 locale, which helps
give Cocteau a genuine feel.
While I
think Modigliani is better overall, its
chief advantage over John and Yoko: A Love Story, for me, is the
setting. I’m an unabashed Midnight in Paris fan, and this film is
set only a handful of years before the ‘20s sequences of that one. Figures like Picasso and Gertrude Stein
appear in both, and it just seems like such an awesome, happening place to
be. If I had access to a TARDIS, it’s
definitely a time and place I’d want to visit (and hopefully be immediately
adored by Ernest Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds, a la Midnight in Paris.)
Accent Watch
French,
making it the first non-U.K. accent I’ve heard from PC. It’s harder for me to tell if it’s any good,
but PC is so enthusiastic with it that I’m giving it a thumbs-up anyway.
Recommend?
In
General
– Not necessarily. While I like the
scenes of the art community goings-on, it’s a pretty standard artist biopic.
PC-wise – Again, not necessarily. PC looks like he was born to play a post-WWI
French poet and art lover, but he doesn’t have a lot to do.
Warnings
Drug references
and some language. Sexual content,
including paintings of nudes, and a scene of violence.
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