Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Artist In Residence ‘Surviving Picasso’ Portrays The Woman Who Refused To Surrender Her Soul

In memoir after memoir, the contention about genius is always the same: Living with it is never easy.

Francoise Gilot, the woman who lived with Pablo Picasso for 10 years and bore him two children, said that and more about her life with the renowned Spanish painter.

That Picasso was a genius is beyond debate; a 70-year career resulting in some 20,000 individual works in a variety of media is ample proof.

That he was a dictatorial womanizer is also true, as is the fact that his moods on a daily basis ranged from childish to brooding, from needy to near-comically strong. All this is well-documented in books other than “Picasso: Creator and Destroyer,” Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington’s harsh study of Gilot’s decade as Picasso’s live-in lover.

So it’s no surprise that the Picasso of James Ivory’s “Surviving Picasso” is not exactly a graduate of male-sensitivity training. Taking her material almost exclusively from Huffington’s book, Ivory’s screenwriter, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, portrays Picasso mostly as a bullying boor.

But Jhabvala, the writing third of the Ivory-Ismail Merchant machine (“Howard’s End,” etc.), isn’t content to stop there. Where many screen biographies are content to explain away such bad behavior, passing it off as a needful sacrifice to the icon of genius, Jhabvala is not. Her Picasso, whatever his other charms, ultimately comes across as a self-indulgent master of manipulation.

Her talent, though, is to show, even in the face of such despicable actions, how attractive such a man can be. Or, at least, this man.

When Gilot (newcomer Natascha McElhone) first meets Picasso (Anthony Hopkins), she is just 23 and he’s already 62. The setting is occupied Paris of 1943, and Gilot is on the verge of quitting her studies so that she can paint full-time. Picasso is a world-wide artistic presence whose reputation is to only grow once the war ends.

Picasso has also enjoyed the company of numerous women. As this movie would have it, though, he has never met anyone quite like Gilot. Giving herself to him willingly, she refuses to play the game as he wants - with he the seducer, she the prey.

And even as he commences his campaign to wear down her willful streak, he is never completely able to make her over as he has the other major women of his life - his Russian ex-wife Olga (Jane Lapotaire), who bore him his first son; Marie Therese (Susannah Harker), the adoring mother of his first daughter; and the near-mad lover Dora Maar (Julianne Moore) - all of whom have, in one way or another, given up a part of their essential selves to serve him.

Gilot, who has her own issues to work out with father figures (one scene involves her getting beaten by her real father), stretches to do Picasso’s bidding. But she never stops being the woman who is able to say, confident in the rhetorical power of her question, “Do you really think I would allow myself to be destroyed by a man - even if he is Picasso?”

Even so, she stays much longer than is healthy. She works for Picasso, cares for their children and manages both his business and emotional needs despite the fact that he gives her nowhere near as much in return (and virtually nothing in the way of money).

So why does she do this? Partly for the same reason why the others stay with him: Because of his genius and because he needs them.

But the bigger part is that, particularly as played by Hopkins (complete with dark-tinted contact lenses), the world seems to be brighter whenever he walks into the room. This Picasso is the kind of man capable of seducing most everyone, from servants to gallery owners to virtually any woman he meets. He is a true charismatic presence.

Once the charismatic aura is broken, however, Gilot is able to leave. And leave she does, at age 33 with her own life ahead of her. As for Picasso, he is 72 and on the verge of yet another artistic incarnation.

Ivory, and therefore Jhabvala, can be faulted for some of what occurs in “Surviving Picasso.” McElhone’s obtrusive narration isn’t consistent, for example, and we never get a real feel for why Picasso was (and still is) held in such high regard as an artist.

But Hopkins is his typically good self, even if Ivory doesn’t allow him half the opportunity to shine that Oliver Stone did in “Nixon.” McElhone proves to be just fine as a woman who can be pushed but not shoved. And among another half-dozen notable performances, the very-American actress Moore is riveting with an accent that is just enough to be convincing but not enough to be distracting.

As anyone who took Art 101 knows, Picasso died in 1973 at the age of 91. His work is still revered, as a recent exhibit of his at New York’s Museum of Modern Art reveals.

It’s likely Gilot believed that her years with the artist were worth the hardships she endured. After all, it’s rare to get so close to genius.

And, after all, she did escape with her sense of self mostly intact.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “SURVIVING PICASSO” *** Location: Magic Lantern Cinemas Credits: Directed by James Ivory, starring Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Jane Lapotaire and Diane Venora Running time: 2:05 Rating: R

This sidebar appeared with the story: “SURVIVING PICASSO” *** Location: Magic Lantern Cinemas Credits: Directed by James Ivory, starring Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Jane Lapotaire and Diane Venora Running time: 2:05 Rating: R