Modigliani (2004, R)

 

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.