"Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus"

As Arbus, Nicole Kidman radiates warmth and empathy that are nowhere to be seen in the photographer's work.

By Stephanie Zacharek

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Nicole Kidman

Nov. 10, 2006 | "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus" may be many things. But as a portrait of the photographer Diane Arbus, who made a name for herself with her pictures of circus freaks and expressionless children (among other subjects), it is definitely -- as an elaborately calligraphic title card at the beginning of the picture informs us -- imaginary.

Director Steven Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson last collaborated on the 2002 "Secretary," an openhearted and liberating picture about the inexplicability of sexual desire, and of love. Shainberg and Wilson's impulses are equally generous here -- too generous: This Diane Arbus, as she's portrayed by a tremulous Nicole Kidman, radiates warmth and empathy that's nowhere to be seen in the work of the real Diane Arbus. "Fur" is intended to be a tribute to Arbus, but it's more a fancifully embroidered tapestry of wishful thinking: The movie asks us to believe that the woman behind the camera was actually a nice person, which is a lovely idea, until you actually look at her pictures.

The movie opens with Kidman's Diane traveling somewhere -- we dont yet know where -- on a lowly bus, camera in tow. It's 1958. We'll learn later that for years Diane has been helping her husband, Allan (Ty Burrell), run a successful commercial-photography studio. Diane's moneyed parents, David and Gertrude Nemerov (Harris Yulin and Jane Alexander), weren't crazy about the match, but they've helped the couple by giving Allan advertising work for the tony department store David runs. The Nemerovs stage a fashion show in the Arbuses' semi-modest (by rich people's standards, anyway) Manhattan apartment, trying to entice fur buyers by showing svelte models dressed in the season's most fashionable pelts. We get grotesque close-ups of those buyers' leering, chewing mouths, a way of signaling how Diane, a misfit in her own genteel family, sees them.

Diane's taste in furs runs to a shaggy topper that might have been borrowed from Magilla Gorilla. Pay close attention, because this coat will be the symbolic key to "Fur." But before the significance is revealed, the movie shows us the life Diane led before she started taking pictures herself. Her husband has bought her a camera of her own that she hasn't picked up, although he's encouraged her to learn how to use it. She resists -- until she meets a mysterious new neighbor in her building, Lionel Sweeney (Robert Downey Jr.).

Diane is intrigued by Lionel, a gentleman who, in public, wears elaborately decorated ski masks. Later she learns that he's completely covered in wavy, silky brown hair, à la Jean Marais in Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast." (His regally tailored clothes are not so much a second skin as his only skin -- they're the only protection between his soul and the cruelty of the world.) Formerly a sideshow attraction, he's now a wig maker, and he works out of his apartment, which is really less of an apartment than a dream castle, furnished with oddball curios and velvety drapes. It even has an indoor pool, a bath for a Roman god.

Motivated by curiosity and compassion, Diane sneaks off to spend time with Lionel -- and, ostensibly, to photograph him. She regards his furry countenance with a voyeur's obsessiveness, and her affection for him blossoms, slowly, into an erotic attraction.

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