By Bob Graham
Published: May 7, 2009
Javier Beltran is Lorca and Matthew McNulty is Bunuel
When you’ve got a story about the complicated - a little bit of understatement - friendship of three of Spain’s great creative artists, something’s bound to come to life. The new film Little Ashes, after a frustrating stop-and-go beginning, eventually becomes almost as interesting as we have a right to expect, considering its iconic main characters.
Make that two of Spain’s great creative artists, the poet-dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca and the filmmaker Luis Bunuel. When it comes to Surrealist painter-sculptor Salvador Dali, the jury is still out and perhaps losing interest. Just plain crazy or crazy like a fox, Dali in his prime was certainly a master of self-promotion and the art of making money. But when we first meet him, he is still a student in Madrid. Already weird, but a student.
Add to this mix a pre-“Twilight’’ performance as Dali by a young actor likely to become a major star but probably not because of this film, Robert Pattinson.
I imagine any of the teenyboppers who flocked to the vegetarian-vampire Twilight’ will be in for a shock in the unlikely chance they sneak into this R-rater and discover their heartthrob naked down to the pubic-hair line or sharing a bubbly underwater synchronized-swimming mating dance with another man. A lot is made of this episode, but it looks like a perfume commercial.
As the strange - another understatement – Dali, Pattinson does not hold back or distance himself from the assignment. Early on, in fact, he seems to be indulging himself too much in the outrageousness, the narcissism, right from Dali’s first, pouty entrance in an absurd ruffled white collar. (“I am the savior of modern art.”)
If you want to draw a schematic of the degree of gayness of the three men, Garcia Lorca, is at the top, coming to terms with it, as they say, at least as much as an upper-class Spanish gentleman could in the 1920s and ‘30s, but anxious to let go. Despite grandstanding claims to respect “no limits,’’ the conflicted Dali is paralyzingly neurotic about his attraction to the poet and holds back. Bunuel is presented as a homophobe standing on the sidelines shouting insults until there is a revealing encounter in a park. The word “maricon’’ (“faggot’’) is uttered more than once, although this is a mostly English-language film.
The English of Spanish TV actor Javier Beltran, who plays Garcia Lorca, takes a little getting used to, but when he recites the voiceover poetry in Spanish, it is a transformation. A simpatico figure, Beltran emerges effectively as the doomed poet on the cusp of the Spanish Civil War.
Bunuel (British actor Matthew McNulty) is defined by outbursts and muttering, but in a key plot turn lures Dali to Paris, where the painter cultivates his signature waxed, eyebrow-raising moustache and grows a wife, too.
The idea of ménage a trois emerges as a theme of the second half of the film, which finally gains some momentum. When Garcia Lorca’s frustrated fiancée takes matters into her own hands and bursts into the poet’s bedroom, she is surprised – but not too surprised — to discover Dali already there and is apparently willing to let him stick around.
Dali immediately flees to Paris, where he and Bunuel will come up with the eye-slicing Surrealist masterpiece, Un Chien Andalou. Garcia Lorca saw elements of the film (clips are shown) as an insulting reference to him. Is he the Andalusian dog of the title?
By far the best scene in Little Ashes occurs near the end when the sleekly successful Dali invites Garcia Lorca to go to New York with him and his wife, Gala; the possibility of a ménage a trois hangs thick in the air. Spanish actress Arly Jover is a sexually charged presence and easily steals her one scene.
Pattinson’s large, slightly crooked features are given star treatment by cinematographer Adam Suschitzky in several classic close-ups (and in hi-res video). Is it interesting to remember that Leonardo Di Caprio’s stardom was preceded by a role in a gay-themed indie (Rimbaud in Total Eclipse’)?
The early going of Little Ashes - a terrible title and tiresome to explain - has been something of a slog, with its clumsy expository scenes. The characters do not interact so much as pass along background information to the audience. There is a lot of posturing, and not just from Dali. Revolution-sympathizer Bunuel actually says, “I’m part of this underground movement.’’ Oh.
Pattinson can be relied upon to liven things up. Dali becomes ostentatiously mad or has flashes of being off in his own world. At one point he gives off a strangled little yelp, and it’s as if Dali’s crazy streak had rubbed off on the film. Finally.
Little Ashes opens Friday, May 8, at the Clay in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário