Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Joan Plowright
Much livelier and more energetic than the average Merchant-Ivory movie, this engrossing tale is essentially an apologia for Francoise Gilot, who was Pablo Picasso's mistress from 1943 to 1953, bore two of his children and was the only one of the many women in his life to leave him, rather than the other way around.
Hopkins plays Picasso with impressive gravity, portraying him as a relentlessly arrogant, manipulative man, always lustful but capable of emotional rapport only with his children. Yet screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala ignores Picasso's artistic contributions in her zeal to justify Gilot's unhappiness with the life she maneuvered herself into when, as a student and aspiring artist in Paris, she let Picasso pick her up in a cafe. Cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts helps director James Ivory fill the screen with sumptuous tableaux. As long as you're not looking for a rounded portrait of Picasso, this is a splendid movie. (R)
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