Art School Confidential is an intriguing film, but one that will appeal to a limited audience. If you yourself have questioned the nature of art, or are yourself an artist, the film might make an impact. Otherwise it may appear to lack coherence or seem merely episodic. In its favor are fine performances all around, with a magnificent turn by Jim Broadbent as the pathetic failed artist and plaudits to Steve Buscemi for an uncredited performance as the terrifying Broadway Bob. Actually, everyone in the film is terrifying, and if you do not view the film as rather subtle satire, you might come to believe that art school is really the way it is portrayed here, or that all artists have to compromise, or -- well, any of a number of other clichés about art and artists.
This is not, I repeat, a film for everybody. It deals with the coming-of-age of a young artist, who must deal with the cynical attitudes of his teachers, and of various hangers-on, who are all convinced that they never got their share of celebrity pie and desperately seek it. How the youth (Jerome, played to perfection by Max Minghella) arrives at his moment of fame makes up the bulk of the film. Other, brief moments by Anjelica Huston as a world-weary art historian, and a beautifully subtle performance by John Malkovich as blowhard Prof. Sandiford (wait for the scene with the triangles -- it's a gem), give class to what might otherwise have been a tawdry take on the 'confidential' sub-genre in American gangster cinema (one thinks of LA, Kansas City, and New York, amongst others.)
Clearly, I liked the film, despite having to endure some occasionally awkward script-writing (as with Vince, the film-major roommate) but these were intended to fill out the 'art school' palette, and the film-making gag does get funnier as it goes along.
Not a film to be taken seriously, although when Jerome smacks his head against the portrait he did of the beautiful Audrey (Sophia Myles) and then gently kisses it, it is a heartbreaking moment indeed. A failed Pygmalion -- is this what all true artists are?
This is not, I repeat, a film for everybody. It deals with the coming-of-age of a young artist, who must deal with the cynical attitudes of his teachers, and of various hangers-on, who are all convinced that they never got their share of celebrity pie and desperately seek it. How the youth (Jerome, played to perfection by Max Minghella) arrives at his moment of fame makes up the bulk of the film. Other, brief moments by Anjelica Huston as a world-weary art historian, and a beautifully subtle performance by John Malkovich as blowhard Prof. Sandiford (wait for the scene with the triangles -- it's a gem), give class to what might otherwise have been a tawdry take on the 'confidential' sub-genre in American gangster cinema (one thinks of LA, Kansas City, and New York, amongst others.)
Clearly, I liked the film, despite having to endure some occasionally awkward script-writing (as with Vince, the film-major roommate) but these were intended to fill out the 'art school' palette, and the film-making gag does get funnier as it goes along.
Not a film to be taken seriously, although when Jerome smacks his head against the portrait he did of the beautiful Audrey (Sophia Myles) and then gently kisses it, it is a heartbreaking moment indeed. A failed Pygmalion -- is this what all true artists are?