A new term may need to be coined to describe this deeply idiosyncratic and ramshackle docufiction hybrid from Josh Appignanesi. A zero-budget experiment in cine-portraiture, it combines footage of the novelist Chloe Aridjis curating a retrospective of the surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington at Tate Liverpool with a tale of sexual obsession also starring Aridjis, written by Appignanesi after interviewing her. The point, I think, is to dredge the unconscious, to represent inner life on screen – though I may be missing the point.
In the documentary bit, Appignanesi films Aridjis with an old VHS camera as she works on the exhibition and socialises with liberal intelligentsia chums. Aridjis has said that she is playing a character, a more socially awkward, anxious version of herself. In one of the fictional scenes, a friend gives her the grim dating advice: “Get out there.” Aridjis replies: “The man I’m looking for doesn’t exist.” But then he appears, showing up at the gallery one day like a handsome mysterious thug from a Scandi noir (played Marc Hosemann, one of the film’s few professional actors). She is hooked.
Weirdly, I found the fly-on-the-wall art world scenes riveting; the dramatic section less so. For a start, it’s about as erotic as cold mashed potato, with nothing to rival the untamed femaleness of Carrington’s gaze in her work. Still, you’ve got to admire Appignanesi’s intellectual curiosity and total disregard for marketability in making such an unslick movie. Carrington herself – for years overshadowed by her male contemporaries – makes an appearance, cigarette in hand, glorious aged around 80, interviewed in archive: “Romantic love. I think it’s silly. You have to own your soul. To hand it over to some half-arsed man, I wouldn’t recommend that.”
