There is a word, memorably coined by Hugh Grant, for this type of film: Euro-pud. Take some public money from a European government, select a writer-director known principally (if at all) for his foreign-language films, and assemble a cast of one American star and an assortment of European actors. Scramble, and serve in a handful of continental cinemas that need films on the cheap.
Raoul Ruiz's biopic of Gustav Klimt feels like what it is - a polyglot project made to please a national government rather than a cinema audience. It is by turns boring, uninformative, poorly acted, directionless, non-sensical and crass. John Malkovich, in the role of the titular Austrian artist, spends the vast majority of the film looking bored or dead, perhaps appropriately, since the translated script portrays Klimt as a world-weary man condemned to a creeping death by his syphilitic encounters with prostitutes.
Other characters dart in and out of his life with befuddling rapidity, either making imperious statements that are in no way profound or laughing at things that aren't funny. They also appear to be mounted on lazy Susans, as one of Ruiz's irritating motifs is to wheel the camera around his actors so that the background is a dizzying whirl. This, like his other themes (breaking mirrors and requests for water), are so heavy-handed that you wonder if his inspiration was an essay written by a teenage history of art student.
The film is also knee-deep in absurdity, only some of which is intentional. Klimt has two ludicrously staged fist fights on the streets of Vienna, and there is one dreadful scene in which an unexplained stranger is meant to be doing shadow puppetry. It is difficult to suspend disbelief as the prancing figure on the screen is clearly not the man's waggling fingers, but Saffron Burrows's backlit silhouette. Malkovich is obliged to play along, however, and slithers around in front of it, casting no shadow of his own.
Arguably the worst scene features Klimt chatting to Egon Schiele in a bar as the lights go out and a crazed tramp enters, apparently to act out a piece of performance art about war. Schiele leaves in plain view, and yet at their next meeting Klimt exclaims: "What happened to you? You disappeared."
Bags of full-frontal nudity and occasionally brave efforts at acting fail to disguise a film that, ultimately, tells us little about its subject or his art. He was, we are told, foul-mouthed, delusional and constantly thirsty. I'm not even convinced this is accurate. It is a film that desperately wants to be Amadeus, but ends up being like Jefferson in Paris. Pointless and contrived, this is Europud at its worst.
Raoul Ruiz's biopic of Gustav Klimt feels like what it is - a polyglot project made to please a national government rather than a cinema audience. It is by turns boring, uninformative, poorly acted, directionless, non-sensical and crass. John Malkovich, in the role of the titular Austrian artist, spends the vast majority of the film looking bored or dead, perhaps appropriately, since the translated script portrays Klimt as a world-weary man condemned to a creeping death by his syphilitic encounters with prostitutes.
Other characters dart in and out of his life with befuddling rapidity, either making imperious statements that are in no way profound or laughing at things that aren't funny. They also appear to be mounted on lazy Susans, as one of Ruiz's irritating motifs is to wheel the camera around his actors so that the background is a dizzying whirl. This, like his other themes (breaking mirrors and requests for water), are so heavy-handed that you wonder if his inspiration was an essay written by a teenage history of art student.
The film is also knee-deep in absurdity, only some of which is intentional. Klimt has two ludicrously staged fist fights on the streets of Vienna, and there is one dreadful scene in which an unexplained stranger is meant to be doing shadow puppetry. It is difficult to suspend disbelief as the prancing figure on the screen is clearly not the man's waggling fingers, but Saffron Burrows's backlit silhouette. Malkovich is obliged to play along, however, and slithers around in front of it, casting no shadow of his own.
Arguably the worst scene features Klimt chatting to Egon Schiele in a bar as the lights go out and a crazed tramp enters, apparently to act out a piece of performance art about war. Schiele leaves in plain view, and yet at their next meeting Klimt exclaims: "What happened to you? You disappeared."
Bags of full-frontal nudity and occasionally brave efforts at acting fail to disguise a film that, ultimately, tells us little about its subject or his art. He was, we are told, foul-mouthed, delusional and constantly thirsty. I'm not even convinced this is accurate. It is a film that desperately wants to be Amadeus, but ends up being like Jefferson in Paris. Pointless and contrived, this is Europud at its worst.