Misbegotten bio-pic on the artist and the women in his life, with everyone in front and behind the camera hopelessly miscast. Where’s the passion, where’s the danger . . . where’s the art? (Though since this is mostly post-WWII Picasso, the lackluster art is as much Picasso’s fault as the filmmakers’.) Constructed around the memories of Françoise Gilot, for a decade muse, mistress & childbearer, the film manages to touch on all the major women he loved and/or married . . . and then came to hate, yet reveal nothing other than Picasso as an alarmingly self-centered prick who usually got his way in the end. Heck, he was paying the bills. The usual Merchant/Ivory gang (director James Ivory; producer Ismail Merchant; script Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, from an Arianna Huffington bio of Gilot; lenser Tony Pierce-Roberts; score Richard Robbins) all painfully out of their fach. So too most of a ‘veddy’ British cast. With Anthony Hopkins’ clipped consonants a particular distraction. (Exception: Dominic West, excellent as Pablo’s wastrel son Paulo.) Proof that nothing is more boring than watching paint dry . . . even when it’s Picasso’s paint.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Not seen here, but surely Antonio Banderas made more contact with the Picasso life-force on the recent GENIUS series. (Javier Bardem might have been even better.)
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