From Warner Bros.
Directed by James Ivory
Starring
Anthony Hopkins
Natascha McElhone
Julianne Moore
Susannah Harker
Joss Ackland
Joan Plowright
Peter Gerety
Jane Lapotaire
Dominic West
Diane Venora
Bob Peck
Here is a stylish, passionate look at the life of Pablo Picasso (Hopkins) during the approximately 10-year period when he was involved with a young French student, Françoise Gilot (McElhone). 40 years his junior. Although they would never marry, they would have two children together. The title comes out of the fact that although Picasso was cruelly involved with many people, Gilot feels she was one to get out relatively unscathed.
Produced and directed by the great team of James Ivory and Ismael Merchant with a screenplay adapted by the frequent third member of the partnership, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the film is based on a book by Arianna Huffington. During the years of the Picasso-Gilot relationship, approximately 1943-53, Picasso was not as busy artistically as he was in his earlier life. Some of that time was devoted to a new interest in pottery.
The thrust of the story is Picasso's relationships with women and an interesting one it is. I always felt such passion for this story. If some did not, it is likely because Picasso was simply not a very nice man nor is he portrayed as one here. Highly intellectual, constantly seductive and aggressively selfish, he didn't treat anyone very kindly. Most of his wrath was reserved for his woman of the moment although there was enough left over for his prior relationships. Actually he never stopped being involved with most of them and Gilot had to share her life at different times with several.
As the story opens in Paris around the time of the liberation, Picasso is ending his turbulent relationship with painter and photographer Dora Maar (Moore). She was his inspiration and muse for much of his work during their nine years together. She was quite seductive and masochistic which he ultimately tired of. She was well-known for splaying the fingers of one hand on a table and then taking a knife and quickly attempting to stab the table in between the fingers. There was little doubt she was a bit over the edge.
Maar's mental and emotional well-being was threatened by Picasso who certainly brought little stability to his relationships. He was also a serial cheater and during his relationships with Maar and later Gilot, he spent every Thursday and Sunday with another woman, model Marie Therese Walter (Harker), mother of his daughter, Maya. After Maar's relationship with Picasso cooled, she still lived around the corner from him for years in a house he bought for her. He continued to control her and she was his psychological prisoner.
Picasso never ended a relationship before starting a new one. He was married to Olga Khokhlova (Lapotaire) mother of his son Paulo (West), from 1916-55. A former ballerina, Olga actually did stand up to him but he stomped on her emotional well-being until she wasn't good for much more than lunatic ravings, often in public, and often directed at Picasso's current flame, whomever she might be.
The story is told from Gilot's point of view. When she first meets him in a cafe, she observes him being introduced by one friend to other friends. The first friend says to Picasso they admire you very much and he replies of course they do. But Gilot admires him, too, and while romance is not at the center of her universe, learning from him is.
When she tells her stern father (Peck) that she is going to study painting instead of law, as he wishes, he threatens to have her committed. Only her grandmother (Plowright) understands and encourages her. When the father catches Gilot sneaking out of the house for good, he beats her. It was a portend of things to come.
They only barely know one another when Picasso invites her to move in. He gives her the attic apartment. His large quarters look not so much as a home than as a messy studio with every inch covered with tools of the trade. As a butler greets Gilot with her few suitcases, he gives her a grim warning... go away. Her grandmother warns her that Picasso destroys women. Whether she thinks she is the woman who is going to change him, we cannot be sure. What is certain is this lovely woman is quietly independent.
She is taken in by his attention (and undoubtedly his fame and knowledge) not yet knowing that he wants all of her time and will demand that she give up her friends and any life away from him. That independence seems to evaporate. Yet she loves that he has a need to touch her. He constantly brushes her face with the back of his hand, strokes her hair, plays with the scarf around her neck.
Soon he is belittling her and when she complains he reminds her that it's for her own good and that he loves her. It wouldn't be long before he gets physical (not the good kind) and openly flaunts his other relationships. He is mean to his staff and cruelly dismissive of his son Paulo.
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| McElhone & Hopkins |
One day she packs her things as she awaits dawn. She then sneaks off, quickly walking down a country road. Soon his car is seen roaring up behind her. They tussle on the road... he drags her to the car, she gets away, he runs after her and puts her in the car.
Shortly thereafter she gives birth to a son, Claude, and three years later a daughter Paloma. Although he is an atheist, while in a church alone together, he makes Gilot promise before God to be his only and forever. She reluctantly says yes and when she asks him to do the same, she is quickly ushered out.
She is forced to meet all the exes. She and Dora aren't exactly chums because the latter is so jealous. Gilot shows respect toward Marie-Therese, likely due to her having Picasso's child still in the home. Gilot is wary of Olga as is understandable when one yells at another in public places. Gilot puts up with Picasso joining the communist party, his general inactivity in his work, his stored-up competition with Henri Matisse (whom Gilot greatly admires) and that he treats women as pets. She has a tougher time accepting his sometimes casual and overly-strict interest in the children.
But one day she notices that Jacqueline Roque, six years younger than Gilot, has moved into the house, Picasso says, to help him with his new passion, pottery. In time she recognizes the signs of betrayal and they have a good row. He tells her that he has never loved her because he has never loved anyone. He also says no one leaves a man like me.
She gathers her children and moves out of his home and his life. He yells out that he never wants to see any of them again. One day they saw one another at a bullfight. Picasso and Roque are in the stands and Gilot is looking radiant atop a prancing stallion in the ring when their eyes meet. Fini.
While all the acting is quite good, the film belongs to Hopkins and McElhone. Her ethereal, quiet beauty is the perfect antidote to his noisy bluster. It's nearly impossible to find any humanity in him although his celebrity is undeniable. Hopkins, of course, is the man to play him, not only for the physical likeness but also they had tortured souls in common. The great solace is in the quiet dignity of McElhone's textured and uncompromising performance.
This was the third of four collaborations between Hopkins and the Merchant-Ivory team. There was Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) and The City of Your Final Destination (2002).
McElhone has not worked a great deal in big-screen films and this was her first. I would come to enjoy her in such films as Mrs. Dalloway (1997), Ronin (1998), Laurel Canyon (2002) and Ladies in Lavender (1004).
Of course, as with all Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala offerings, there is a signature stylishness that always draws me to their work. The words just float around in my head after hearing them and the beauty of the sets, the exteriors of homes, the costumes and not but hardly least, France, are just so beautifully photographed by Tony Pierce-Roberts.
The attention to period detail, of course, is key to what these filmmakers can achieve. Migawd, I love their work. As a biography, it seemed more authentic than some with virtually no sugar-coating. More importantly, I learned things and they were given to me in a highly-entertaining way. Furthermore, it challenged me to head to the internet and learn even more about these fascinating people.
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| The real Gilot & Picasso |
Out of the time frame of the story, Picasso would marry Jacqueline Roque (only his second wife) and the marriage would last until his death in 1973 at age 91.
Françoise Gilot would go on to become a cubist painter, an art critic of some renown and a best-selling author. In 1964 she wrote Life with Picasso and it enraged him so that he never again saw her or his children. She would quickly marry artist Luc Simon, have a daughter, and divorce seven years later. Then in 1970 Gilot would marry famed American polio vaccine pioneer, Jonas Salk, and they would remain married until his passing in 1995.
Gilot had objected to this movie. While it is unknown exactly why that is, it is known that the studio wanted to option her book and when she refused they picked Arianna Huffington's version. Perhaps that is the annoyance.
Gilot is alive today at age 98.
Here is a glimpse of the Gilot-Picasso movie departure:
Next posting:
Visiting Film Noir
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