3 out of 5

Director: Steven Shainberg

Repeating director Shainberg’s apparent love of repressed desires (see his previous ‘Secretary’), ‘Fur’ manages to be a visually compelling film with some great performances. Unfortunately, while it isn’t fully meant to be a biography, it still falls into the trap of a lot of biographies – where do you start and where do you end. Our subject here is Diane Arbus, whom we meet as a proper housewife who helps her husband with his advertising photography career. Kidman – as Arbus – really fleshes out this role in a believable and realistic way that Spader and Gyllenhaal in ‘Secretary’ could not do. When Kidman finds herself interested her new upstairs neighbor – a masked man (Downey) who turns out to be an ex-“freakshow” performer (i.e. all covered in hair), we believe and understand her transition from straight-laced to supporter of the ‘strange’. And great performances abound. Although Downey – while well-cast and convincing – essentially just does his charming Downey thing covered in fur, Ty Burrell shines as Kidman’s husband, perfectly balancing a mix of respect and frustration and love regarding his wife. So then we’re back to our plot. It is a romance, and it does balance the tricky line between exploitation and introspection (which certainly was part of Arbus’ eventual photographic oeuvre as well), and I was impressed by Shainberg’s willingness to write these characters truthfully – the husband is not evil, Arbus does not make, necessarily, the “right” choices, and we are not offered easy answers for why these things are. But the film still lacks an emotional connection. The visual minutiae on display is excellent, the camera lingering just long enough on scenes or characters. The relationship between Kidman and Downey is fascinating. But the film is a tribute, essentially, and thus doesn’t feel like it’s really about anything. It’s well made and worth watching, but doesn’t stretch to really make us feel what was going on beneath the skin.