by MATTHEW HAYS

It’s pretty much a given that the standard biopic treatment of public figures has become awfully tired. The films are often mired in predictability, bogged down by the weight of our expectations.

With his latest film, Steven Shainberg (Secretary) attempts to move beyond biopic cliché, taking on the life of legendary photographer Diane Arbus. Arbus, of course, was a maverick and iconoclast who shook up the picture-taking milieu with her graphic shots of the marginalized. Her depictions of outsiders are now heralded as entirely groundbreaking; it’s hard to imagine that Larry Clark would have made a film like Kids if it hadn’t been for Arbus’s body of work.

Shainberg sees fit to keep some of the basic facts intact concerning Arbus’s life. Played by Nicole Kidman, Arbus is depicted as a repressed housewife, dutifully performing assistant duties to her husband, a commercial photographer. Shainberg then decides to introduce an entirely fictional plot into the mix, hoping to explore Arbus’s complex life and work through this bit of make-believe. This film depicts Arbus becoming obsessed with a neighbour in the building, a man (Robert Downey Jr.) who has a bizarre condition making hair grow over every inch of his body. Through her relationship with this neighbour, we are supposed to see how Arbus learned about outsiders, rejects and deviants.

I can certainly appreciate that Shainberg wants to do something different here, but the results are very mixed. The juxtaposition between Arbus’s cold, calculated, suffocatingly conformist life with hubby and the kids and the bohemian lifestyle represented by her let-your-hair-down neighbour is just far too obvious. There is basically no tension in this film. It’s just Kidman looking fascinated by her hairy neighbour, learning about the weirder things in life.

Sadly—and rather ironically—this in turn just left me yearning for a more standard biopic treatment of Arbus’s life. What of her actual photo sessions? What drove her? Why did she commit suicide, when seemingly at a high point in her artistic achievement? Fur attempts to illuminate Arbus through fantasy; instead, it leaves us yearning for something more grounded in realism.

Fur opens Friday, Nov. 17

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