Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 109
Fresh: 35 | Rotten: 74
This portrait of a groundbreaking photographer lacks the daring of its subject.
Average Rating: 4.3/10
Critic Reviews: 39
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 32
This portrait of a groundbreaking photographer lacks the daring of its subject.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 18,994
Movie Info
Nicole Kidman assumes the identity of visionary photographer Diane Arbus in a film that draws inspiration from author Patricia Bosworth's best-selling biography to tell the tale of a once-shy woman who becomes one of her generation's most strikingly original visual artists. Diane Arbus was a typical wife and mother whose morbid interests stood in stark contrast with her decidedly conventional existence in 1950s-era New York. Upon making the acquaintance of her eccentric, newly arrived neighbor,
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Cast
-
Nicole Kidman
Diane Arbus -
Robert Downey Jr.
Lionel Sweeney -
Ty Burrell
Allan Arbus -
Harris Yulin
David Nemerov -
Jane Alexander
Gertrde Nemerov -
Emmy Clarke
Grace Arbus -
Genevieve McCarthy
Sophie Arbus -
Boris McGiver
Henry Jack -
Marceline Hugot
Henry Tippa -
Emily Bergl
Allan's New Assistant -
Lynn Marie Stetson
Fiona (naked girl) -
Christina Rouner
Lois -
David J. Steinberg
Singing Little Person
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All Critics (117) | Top Critics (42) | Fresh (35) | Rotten (74) | DVD (8)
[The] film illuminates Arbus' artistically brilliant, emotionally unstable life for no longer than the popping of a flash bulb.
Top CriticStilted, stylized and art-directed within an inch of its life, Shainberg's movie (which was written by his Secretary collaborator, Erin Cressida Wilson) manages to be both oppressively literal and fatefully fuzzy at the same time.
Don't be fooled for a second by that subtitle. Fur bills itself as An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, but this thing's got all the imagination of a career bureaucrat slumped in his cubicle awaiting a pension.
Shainberg neither sugarcoats [Diane Arbus's] distance from her girls nor judges it. The filmmakers understand Arbus's story within the context of her time and upbringing.
The world created by Shainberg never seems strange or real enough to convince us that we're getting the goods on anything. Put another way, this imaginary portrait might have done better had it stuck closer to reality.
[Arbus's] most famous images still have the power to shock, hanging as they do on the walls of the world's museums. Fur, the movie about her, reaches for that same jolt and settles instead for a raised eyebrow.
Director Steven Shainberg's follow-up to his groundbreaking film "Secretary" (2002) is an anti-biopic that dares to read between the lines of its subject's artistic vision rather than replay the common knowledge events of photographer Diane Arbus' life.
Nicole Kidman is superb as the woman who blooms and goes a trifle mad at the touch of this other world inhabited by Lionel, and Robert Downey Jnr is the perfect actor for the role.
Una película diferente y para nada complaciente con el espectador, que permite aproximarse a una de las artistas más influyentes del siglo XX.
If the filmmakers are telling us that Diane's artistic creativity was unleashed by the love of a good freak, then it's a shame. To turn a story so full of good intentions at the beginning into another movie about a woman who is liberated from the chains
Depois do surpreendente Secretária, que brilhava por sua enganosa despretensão, Shainberg tropeça ao encantar-se mais com a própria ambição artística do que com as brilhantes realizações de sua suposta biografada.
An interestingly designed but inescapably pointless film.
Kidman and Downey Jr's moving performances more than make up for the film's daft script.
Kidman delivers another standout performance, transparent and magnetic. Burrell is no match for Downey's hypnotic beast. The hairy romantic chemistry with Kidman is electric, the context inspired.
While Steven Shainberg and his collaborators should be congratulated for eschewing the traditional biopic route, Fur is a noble experiment that goes awry. Sad to say but this is not a film for anyone wishing to learn about Diane Arbus.
Stylish, imaginative and beautifully directed, this is a slow-moving but utterly mesmerising drama with terrific performances from Kidman and Downey Jnr.
These are themes that everyone can identify with, especially when they're expressed with such intelligence and artistry.
Kidman wades in over her depth in this genuinely odd but disappointingly flat attempt to recast a biopic as a fairytale.
Certainly the film isn't without its flaws. Then again, perfection is in the eye of beholder.
Far-out touches and liberal application of metaphor are compensated for by intensity and two mesmerising performances.
The idea of growth as metaphor truly runs wild in Fur, until the thicketry of meaning and subtext becomes more dense than meaningful, and your attention is stopped, finally, at the surface of Nicole Kidman's placid full moon of a face.
full review in Greek
"Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus" points out in its title that the picture is mostly fictionalized, but in the opening prologue it states that Diane Arbus was one of America's most important artists. Why make that statement if you can't prove it
Pretentious twaddle that tells you nothing about Arbus. Robert Downey Jr. manages to be dignified even when covered in mountains of body hair. That's something.
Audience Reviews for Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
A provocative tribute to misunderstood genius, Fur is one part biography and two parts fairy tale. Ominous yet oddly endearing.
Super Reviewer
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Movie: ID: 326391543 Title: Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus Release Date: 2006-11-10 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 4 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Fur : un portrait imaginaire de Diane Arbus (FR)
- Retrato de una obsesión (ES)
Even knowing it was "an imaginary portrait", I expected something more biographical and maybe more faithful to the image I have of Arbus. Her photos can lead us to such a portrait, but knowing a bit about her we know she was not "one of us"*, but was more to a nice intruder. (Susan Sontag talks about it in "On Photograph"). Also, Nicole Kidman's Diane, and this is not her fault, could be both a model of Allan's ads or Arbus's strange photos, not mentioning that she seems a contemporay version of her previous Viginia Woolf. The film is not bad but it ends up resuming Diane Arbus into a fetishist herself and tries to explain her work by her supposed inner freak. But don't take me that seriously. "Fur" can be a good watch, specially if you like fantasy genre.
*Freaks, directed by Tod Browning.