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Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

  • 20062006
  • RR
  • 2h 2m
IMDb RATING
6.3/10
16K
YOUR RATING
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • IMDbPro
Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
Theatrical Trailer from Picturehouse Entertainment
Play trailer2:22
1 Video
99+ Photos
  • Biography
  • Drama
  • Romance

Turning her back on her wealthy, established family, Diane Arbus falls in love with Lionel Sweeney, an enigmatic mentor who introduces Arbus to the marginalized people who help her become on... Read allTurning her back on her wealthy, established family, Diane Arbus falls in love with Lionel Sweeney, an enigmatic mentor who introduces Arbus to the marginalized people who help her become one of the most revered photographers of the twentieth century.Turning her back on her wealthy, established family, Diane Arbus falls in love with Lionel Sweeney, an enigmatic mentor who introduces Arbus to the marginalized people who help her become one of the most revered photographers of the twentieth century.

IMDb RATING
6.3/10
16K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Steven Shainberg
  • Writers
    • Erin Cressida Wilson
    • Patricia Bosworth(book "Diane Arbus")
  • Stars
    • Nicole Kidman
    • Robert Downey Jr.
    • Ty Burrell
Top credits
  • Director
    • Steven Shainberg
  • Writers
    • Erin Cressida Wilson
    • Patricia Bosworth(book "Diane Arbus")
  • Stars
    • Nicole Kidman
    • Robert Downey Jr.
    • Ty Burrell
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 102User reviews
    • 94Critic reviews
    • 50Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 wins

    Videos1

    Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
    Trailer 2:22
    Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

    Photos155

    Nicole Kidman in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman and Ty Burrell in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Jane Alexander and Harris Yulin in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman and Ty Burrell in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman and Genevieve McCarthy in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Nicole Kidman
    Nicole Kidman
    • Diane Arbusas Diane Arbus
    Robert Downey Jr.
    Robert Downey Jr.
    • Lionel Sweeneyas Lionel Sweeney
    Ty Burrell
    Ty Burrell
    • Allan Arbusas Allan Arbus
    Harris Yulin
    Harris Yulin
    • David Nemerovas David Nemerov
    Jane Alexander
    Jane Alexander
    • Gertrude Nemerovas Gertrude Nemerov
    Emmy Clarke
    Emmy Clarke
    • Grace Arbusas Grace Arbus
    Genevieve McCarthy
    • Sophie Arbusas Sophie Arbus
    Boris McGiver
    Boris McGiver
    • Jack Henryas Jack Henry
    Marceline Hugot
    Marceline Hugot
    • Tippa Henryas Tippa Henry
    Mary Duffy
    • Altheaas Althea
    Emily Bergl
    Emily Bergl
    • Allan's New Assistantas Allan's New Assistant
    Lynn-Marie Stetson
    Lynn-Marie Stetson
    • Fiona - Naked Girlas Fiona - Naked Girl
    • (as Lynn Marie Stetson)
    Gwendolyn Bucci
    Gwendolyn Bucci
    • Dominatrixas Dominatrix
    Christina Rouner
    Christina Rouner
    • Loisas Lois
    Matt Servitto
    Matt Servitto
    • Handsome Clientas Handsome Client
    David Green
    • Another Clientas Another Client
    Sandriel Frank
    • Fox Modelas Fox Model
    Krista Coyle
    Krista Coyle
    • Fashion Modelas Fashion Model
    • Director
      • Steven Shainberg
    • Writers
      • Erin Cressida Wilson
      • Patricia Bosworth(book "Diane Arbus")
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
    • All cast & crew

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    Storyline

    Edit
    In 1958, in New York City, the upper class Diane Arbus is a frustrated and lonely woman with a conventional marriage with two daughters. Her husband is a photographer sponsored by the wealthy parents of Diane, and she works as his assistant. When Lionel Sweeney, a mysterious man with hypertrichosis (a.k.a. werewolf syndrome, a disease that causes excessive body hair), comes to live in the apartment in the upper floor, Diane feels a great attraction for him and is introduced to the world of freaks and marginalized people, falling in love with Lionel. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
    • male full frontal nudity
    • photographer
    • diane arbus
    • character name in title
    • pubic hair
    • 184 more
    • Plot summary
    • Plot synopsis
    • Taglines
      • A wife playing a role. A mother caring for her family. A woman discovering her true self. And a mysterious stranger, who unlocks a hidden world.
    • Genres
      • Biography
      • Drama
      • Romance
      • Thriller
    • Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)
      • Rated R for graphic nudity, some sexuality and language
    • Parents guide

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Director Steven Shainberg's uncle, Lawrence, was a close friend of Diane Arbus.
    • Goofs
      Towards the end of the movie, Lionel is shown beginning to blow up the canvas raft. He later explains that it is for Diane when he takes his final swim. Someone suffering from such extremely low lung function that he will only live a few months would never be able to inflate a raft that size.
    • Quotes

      Lionel Sweeney: [holding an inflatable raft] I blew this up for you.

      Diane Arbus: Why did you want me to shave you? Hmm? Why?

      Lionel Sweeney: So I could swim out further.

      Diane Arbus: Swim out?

      Lionel Sweeney: Yes.

      Diane Arbus: What are you saying?

      Lionel Sweeney: [he struggles for words] That I want you with me.

      Diane Arbus: What?

      Lionel Sweeney: Diane.

      Diane Arbus: What are you talking about? You want me to watch you die?

      Lionel Sweeney: I want you with me, that's all.

      Diane Arbus: But is this what you did? Made me fall in love with you to watch you...

      Lionel Sweeney: I don't see it that way at all. I love you.

    • Connections
      Featured in HBO First Look: Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
    • Soundtracks
      Midnight Romance
      Written by Alain Leroux (as Alain J. Leroux)

      Published by Cypress Creek Music

      Courtesy of 5 Alarm Music

    User reviews102

    Review
    Top review
    Every picture tells a story.
    Any instance in which a filmmaker attempts to blend ideas of fact with fiction - especially when that particular fact is fairly well known and tied to an iconic historical figure - they're going to have problems in maintaining a connection with certain factions of their audience. Just look at some previous examples of this same stylistic device in other films; such as Dreamchild (1985) for instance, in which an elderly Alice Liddell reflects on her time spent with Lewis Carroll and his obsessive compulsion to nail her character to the very pages of his most celebrated work. Even more polarising was David Cronenberg's adaptation of the cult novel Naked Lunch (1991), in which elements of the author's life and works were blended together to create a torturous, darkly-comic and highly homo-erotic trek through the damaged psychological territory of a Burroughs-like bug exterminator. A similar approach was also used by director Steven Sodebergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs with their coolly expressionistic merging of the fantastical and horrific writings of Kafka (1991), with the more mundane, everyday-like tedium of his real life and work.

    Fur (2006), which makes its intentions clear with the subtitle "an imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus", takes on a similar approach to the films aforementioned; blending elements of personal fact and actual biographical detail with a story that is pure, fairy tale fabrication. Having watched the film just a few days ago, I browsed the Internet for previous reviews to get a sense of how other audiences had approached it. In doing so, I was quite shocked and surprised to see just how violently some viewers had reacted to the film; citing everything from the liberal approach of the film's script, the central performance from Nicole Kidman, and the fundamental message that seems implied by the film's very tender sense of emotional drama as reasons why this film was worthless or simply not good. This surprised me for two reasons, firstly; that these intelligent and well-versed viewers were unable to separate the elements of fact surrounding the real life Diane Arbus and her extraordinary body of work from the quite clearly fabricated depiction of grotesque beauty that the filmmakers create through the imagined relationship between our caricature of Diane and a character named Lionel; a mysterious former carnival performer. Secondly, it surprised me that these viewers felt that Arbus's life would be better served by a routine, by the books Hollywood biopic in which all the facts and back stories are simplified, and we end up with a very simple film about the triumph of the little guy against all odds.

    Do people really want bland, cookie-cutter, connect the dots cinema; a struggle over adversary and all the usual nonsense that comes with those A-Z, biographical features, such as Walk the Line (2005) and Ray (2004)? Sadly, it would appear so. What happened to audiences craving imaginative, free-thinking cinema? Something that attempts to deconstruct a greater truth in an intelligent, imaginative and emotionally captivating way that is genuinely suited to the visual, metaphorical capabilities that cinema presents. For me, everything you would need to know about Arbus is here and everything you would need to know about her art is divulged in a number of interesting, highly imaginative visual quirks. You just have to scratch beneath the surface. Read between the lines and you'll see with this film the very psychological impulse and motivation to create something beautiful from the seemingly mundane; to capture that all too fleeting moment and preserve it on film forever. Fur, for me, took us inside the psychological world of Arbus, with none of the black and white moralising or textbook type tedium that often plagues this particular genre; but instead, showing us some of the potential ideas and imagined situations that came to instill her work with such a grotesque sense of beauty.

    It has a long been said; "every picture tells a story". That's what this film is about. Anyone can read a book about the real life Arbus; but how on earth is that enriching the cinematic medium? I personally don't look to cinema to find something that is readily available to me at my local library. This film takes us inside Arbus' world and gives us a beautifully told and imaginative back-story that blends elements of real-life fact with references to Gothic literature, fairy stories, history and the subjective power of the art itself. The creative spirit of this film is exactly in tune with Arbus's creative vision. To give us something like the Rocky (1976) of photographer-themed biographical pictures would, to my mind at least, have been a much greater insult to the unique and continually captivating universe that this particular artist created through her work. You may disagree with the approach, or fail to see the appeal of the story, but for me, Fur is the kind of film that I feel I could go back to again and again and still find a number of things worth raving about.

    Like one of Arbus's iconic pictures, Fur presents us with something seemingly drab, seemingly bizarre, and allows us to take the time to see the inherent beauty behind it. Like the work of Diane Arbus itself, you can choose to see it as something unfeeling or exploitative, or alternatively, you can see it as a gateway into understanding the enormous amount of empathy that Arbus had for her bizarre and often extraordinary subjects. The direction manages to create a mood and an ambiance that is halfway between the aforementioned William S. Burroughs and the antiseptic 50's Americana of The Bell Jar, with the otherworldly danger and mystique of a film like Pan's Labyrinth (2006). Alongside these stylistic elements we also have continual references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the notion of Beauty and the Beast, and all tied together by the fine performances from Kidman as the shackled, stifled Arbus and Robert Downey Jr. as the mysterious and sympathetic Lionel.
    helpful•47
    14
    • ThreeSadTigers
    • Feb 20, 2008

    FAQ1

    • What the heck is going on in this movie?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 20, 2006 (Italy)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Fur
    • Filming locations
      • East 54th Street Recreation Center, New York City, New York, USA
    • Production companies
      • Pressman Film
      • River Road Entertainment
      • Iron Films (I)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $16,800,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $223,202
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $28,815
      • Nov 12, 2006
    • Gross worldwide
      • $2,312,717
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 2 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • SDDS
      • Dolby Digital
      • DTS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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