BERTRAND BONELLO IN PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST/LE DOS ROUGE

In search of the monstrous

Clearly director/musician Bertrand Bonello (House of Pleasure, Saint Laurent) is at home with decadence, and it's hard to tell how much of this exploratory, improvisational mood piece, which languidly flirts with grotesquerie, horror, and eroticism, is the work of Antoine Barraud and how much might simply be inspired by Bonello himself. In it he plays "Bertrand," an "artist" (filmmaker, photographer) who spends his days meeting with with an art eccentric female historian called Célia Bhy (alternately played -- inexplicably -- by either Jeanne Balibar or Géraldine Pailhas) chatting and visiting museums, where he's looking for a work of art, presumably a painting, that exhibits the qualities of the "monstrous," which will be a central element in his next film. In off-and-on conversations in various venues Bertrand and the two Célias discuss Diane Arbus as well as Bacon, Leon Spilliaert, Caravaggio, Theodore Chasseriau, Hans Bellmer, Bosch, and others. There are particular viewings and discussions of an 18th-century Brazilian painting by Joachim da Rocha of a slave with a skin disease and Balthus' large early portrait Alice dans le miroir (in the Pompidou Museum). Bertrand's wife is Barbe, Barbara (Joana Preiss), and from time to time he chats with "Pascal" (Pascal Greggory). Meanwhile he is developing red spots on his back that don't hurt, but keep spreading. About these he has an odd consultation with a friend who's a retired doctor, played by Barbet Schroeder. Is Bertrand's preoccupation with the grotesque showing up as a skin rash? The doctor isn't interested in answering, and doesn't even look. Apparently Bertrand is a victim of Stendhal Syndrome, "a psychosomatic disorder that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to an experience of great personal significance, particularly viewing art" (Wikipedia).

Bonello, on screen, is a shortish man with birdlike features, frail, boyish, slightly androgynous. A small unprepossessing director playing himself, energetic, with a quizzical, deadpan manner: one thinks of Woody Allen. And why would there not be a French Woody Allen, since the French admire the actual Woody so much? But the self-conscious intellectualism of the dialogue and Bonello's far-off, slightly sad look make one forget Woody. There is none of his quick-wittedness and humor.

This film is moody, atmospheric, beautifully photographed. But its scenes move slowly, and lack a discernible progression, and its two hours-plus run-time starts to feel long.

One lugubrious motif, among several, is an interminable interview, never completed satisfactorily, with a shy young gay man who appears to have a "thing" for Bertrand, and whose admiration Bertrand takes advantage of to pose him for stills shot with a Hasselblad posing semi-nude wearing a bra, after Diane Arbus. In one late episode Bertrand takes the train somewhere, perhaps Germany (Frankfurt?) with one of his girlfriends (a flirtation with Célia has begun) who disappears in the modern art museum they visit, and he must return to Paris on the train alone. The director, Antoine Barraud, and Bonello, play all sorts of games, which add to a surreal mood.

This film seems to have been sponsored by, or produced in collaboration with, several art museums. Unlike two such productions, produced by Musée d'Orsay, Olivier Assayas' (Summer Hours) and Hou Hsiao-Hsien's (Flight of the Red Balloon), which are superb (and one may also think of Jem Cohen's appealing Museum Hours), this darker and more peculiar film will appeal to a smaller, more special audience. A voice-over is provided by Charlotte Rampling. Bonello not only stars in the film, his first such performance, but composed the score; and in one scene he performs on an unusual and wonderful instrument.

According to an article in Variety, Barraud is "a tireless producer-director with a hectic one-decade career," and has "helmed a long series of experimental shorts on figures such as Kenneth Anger, Shuji Terayama and Koji Wakamatsu," as well as one previous feature, Les Gouffres ("The Sinkholes") with Nathalie Boutefeu and Mathieu Amalric (Locarno 2012).

Portrait of the Artist/Le dos rouge, 127 mins., is scheduled to debut at Berlin 2015. It is scheduled for French theatrical release 22 April 2015. Screened for this review as part of the March 2015 edition of the Film Society of Lincoln Center-UniFrance joint series Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.