Pain-by-numbers

>> Goya in Bordeaux portrays the awful beauty of the artist's life

by MARK SLUTSKY

Half-fearing a light-infused, piously reverent foreign art film, I somewhat dreaded seeing Spanish director Carlo Saura's Goya in Bordeaux. But from the moment a flushed, blood-red cow carcass hauled itself up onto a meat-hook, its innards spilling out and morphing into the face of an aged Goya, the movie had me: this was no run-of-the-mill artistic hagiography. No, Goya in Bordeaux doesn't shirk at the great artist's often grotesque, terrifying work--it immerses itself in it.

Goya in Bordeaux is told mostly in (intentionally) chronologically confused flashback. It's the 1820s, an old Goya (Francisco Rabal) is in self-imposed exile in France. As he dodders about, still actively producing art, he relates stories from his life to his young daughter, Rosario (Daphne Fernández). We see many vignettes from Goya's career as an artist--his ascension at court, his love for the scheming Duchess of Alba (Maribel Verdu), the unspeakable horror of the Napoleonic invasion. Goya's artwork blurs into many of these scenes, as if the images he's painted and engraved are clouding his memory. What emerges is a film, told as it is through the fragmented memories of an old man, that at times feels static, like a crowded painting. Don't mistake this for negative criticism, though--it's one of the film's great strengths.

Many films attempt to portray artists through the lens of their work, and they're mostly, like Soderbergh's Kafka or Julian Schnabel's Basquiat, failures on some level. Goya in Bordeaux isn't. It works, and much credit must be given to the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (The Conformist, Apocalypse Now). His colours are rich, oily, and his framing inventive--like when Goya walks out of a door and the wall becomes semi-transparent so we can see the old man walking down the hall without a cut. Virtually the entire film is shot on sets; the filmmakers revel in a staginess that's nonetheless cinematic.

Clearly a great passion for the Spanish painter animates Goya in Bordeaux. You've got to be impressed at the dedication this film shows, its willingness to take artistic risks. Moreover, it's smart and unintimidated by its daunting subject matter. A lesser film would have merely re-enacted the events of Goya's life and shown you his art; Saura manages to portray their intersection.

Goya in Bordeaux opens Friday, Nov. 10 at Cinéma du Parc