Parky At the Pictures (11/7/2025)

(Reviews of The Other Way Round; The Shrouds; and Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness)

THE OTHER WAY ROUND.

The Truebas are the first family of Spanish film-making. A former film critic, Fernando won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Year of Enlightenment (1986) before landing an Oscar for Belle Epoque (1992) and sharing a Goya for the animated gem, Chico and Rita (2010). Younger brother David won the Goya for Best Director for Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed (1966), which was produced by his sister-in-law, Cristina Huete. She is the mother of Jonás Trueba, who has cast his father in The Other Way Round, a witty break-up comedy set in the world of film-making that is similar in tone to The August Virgin (2019) and You Have to Come and See It (2022), which also starred Vito Sanz and Itsaso Arana, who is Jonás's off-screen partner.

Film director Alejandra (Itsaso Arana) and actor Alejandro (Vito Sanz) have been together for 14 years. Everyone thinks they're a model couple. But they have agreed to separate and decide to take up a suggestion by her father (Fernando Trueba) and throw a party to celebrate their time together. However, when they call Manu to ask him to play with his band, he laughs off their insistence that they are serious and predicts they'll soon be back together.

Equally incredulous is Simon (Simon Pritchard), their English teacher who spends entire lessons with each trying to understand their reasons for splitting and the notion of the party. While Ale and Alex have different breakfast routines, they continue to share a bed, as their lease is still current. When they visit a flea market, she suggests selling their DVDs, but insists on buying him a teapot. They even view apartments together, as they have yet to decide who will be moving where. Yet, for all the ease of their chatter, they have a habit of correcting each other over minor details - but there's nothing readily apparent about the `problems' she insists they have been having.

Opting not to tell their elderly neighbours who have been an item for 50 years, Ale goes to meet with her editor (Miguel A. Trudu). She explains that their separation party is like a wedding, only the other way around. But he is unconvinced and not sure why she wants changes made to a scene in which Alex goes to a painting class and the teacher (Ana Risueño) suggests his portrait of Ale would work better upside down.

Ale goes to the set where her actor friend, Fer (), is making a TV show. They go to his trailer and she tells him about the parting and the celebration. He shows her a pack of Ingmar Bergman tarot cards and swears by their power, while also remembering the code of symbols that Bergman and Liv Ullmann had used so they knew each other's moods. Alex is amused by the story when he gets home and tells Ale that he has invited Andrea (Valeria Alonso) to the bash with her new girlfriend. However, Ale bridles because Andrea is the ex of her brother (Andrés Gertrúdix) and she doesn't want him feeling awkward at the party.

That night, Ale and Alex watch Blake Edwards's 10 (1979) and they argue over its meaning and whether it's demeaning to women. It's the first time they've disagreed in the story and it's about a film and the way in which the action can be interpreted. He discusses the row with a friend who takes his side that Dudley Moore learns a lesson, although Alex points out that he's also kind of a heel to Julie Andrews and Bo Derek. They are visiting Madrid's natural history museum and Alex tells his friend (who has brought his son) that he often wished that Ale had had a child from a previous relationship, as he had always thought that he would make a good parent, but not a biological father.

Inside the museum, Alex uses the quiet to call his mother. She is so distraught that Ale has to phone her that night to reassure her that the split is for the best and Alex pours Ale a glass of wine and admires her as she talks in profile on the balcony. That night, when he coaxes her out of a bad dream, she falls back to sleep with his clasped hand under her cheek.

She tells her editor about the dream, in which no one on the set can understand her and help her free a cat that is trapped between two doors. He'd rather get on with the work and the music heard in the film carries Ale to a meeting with her brother and his son, Max. When she mentions the party, he scoffs at her for being swayed by their father and his dumb ideas. Arriving at his place for lunch, Ale is dismayed to hear her father also dismissing the party idea as nonsense and he changes the subject to Kierkegaard and his theory of repetition before namedropping American philosopher Stanley Cavell, who used films like The Lady Eve (1942) and the Cary Grant trio of The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story, and His Girl Friday (both 1940) to show how cinema impinges upon life. But he also impresses upon Ale that these screwballs focussed on couples who gave themselves a second chance and realised that things weren't so bad after all.

Alex gets drunk with Simon and chats to a barmaid, who can't believe he's leaving Ale. She is unimpressed when he blocks the kitchen sink and forgets an apartment viewing and a dinner with friends and has a little cry in the park. Late for supper, she taunts the man of the couple they're eating with for being so upset about the break-up, only to get cross with Alex when he suggests she moves out and he stays in their low-rent apartment and leases out a room to pay his overheads.

Still grumpy the next morning, Ale invites Antonio the plumber to the party as he unclogs the sink. Ale accuses her of being patronising and suggests calling the party off rather than throw it at her father's place, where he'd feel at a disadvantage. She agrees the idea sucks and reminds him about the cast-and-crew screening of the rough cut that evening. Two of the producers are negative about the length and the structure (with one not knowing if the film is linear or circular) and Alex leaves rather than listen to their self-serving waffle.

Next morning, he takes the DVDs to the flea market, but the stallholder doesn't want subtitled stuff. Alex is taken by two orange chairs, but the vendor won't break up the pair. So, Ale buys the other when she strolls past and they sit on them while doing a Bergman tarot reading. However, they have no idea what the cards mean and decide to call off the party.

Smoking and drinking more than usual, they begin dividing up their possessions. Alex gives Ale the portrait he has been working on and she's not sure she could hang an image of herself on her wall. They decide to have the party after all and engage a planner and make catering choices. With her hair dyed dark instead of red, Ale also starts trimming her film, as she agrees it's too long, but denies that it's repetitive. She views some passages in fast forward and the story does the same to get to the party - which is limited to a burbled speech by Alex and Ale's father shouting `Cut!'

On moving day, Alex asks Ale to film an audition tape for him for a TV show. She is busy packing and wonders why he bothers when he never gets cast. But she agrees to shoot a scene for him and she reads lines about a woman not wanting to break up, while his character needs time away because he can't live up to her expectations.

Ale prepares a file to send to Alex's agent, but stumbles across some footage of them in Paris a decade earlier. She calls him in and they smile at the people they once were before Ale tells Alex to kiss her. They go to bed and sit naked reading from a book about repetition in love being superior to novelty or reminiscence. A cut takes us to the band on stage at the party and the credits roll over the faces of the guests. Someone makes a toast and the true nature of the gathering becomes charmingly apparent.

Trueba has acknowledged the influence of Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963) and Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day (1993) on this playful and relishably cine-literate comedy. The basic premise came from his father, but Trueba has expanded upon it with Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz, who share the writing credit, as well as delivering note perfect performances.

Arana, who has just made her own directorial bow with The Girls Are Alright (2023), is particularly impressive as Ale, who seems to have precipitated the separation by scripting a break-up movie for herself and her longtime actor partner. But she often seems readier to explore her feelings about the situation in the editing suite (where she can control everything) than she is in their apartment (where she can't). Echoes reverberate here from Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), although Trueba goes further back in the romcom canon by referencing a quartet of classic screwballs and also splitting the screen in the manner of Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959). Closer to home, it's also possible to pick up some Madrileño beats from Emilio Martínez Lázaro's The Other Side of the Bed (2002).

One suspects this self-reflexivity had much to do with Volveréis (which actually translates as `You'll Get Back Together') being named Best European Film during the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes 2024. Equally notable is the wit and precision of Marta Velasco's editing of Santiago Racaj's zesty imagery, which is apt considering Ale's preoccupation during her wind-down time with Alex. Although his chemistry with Arana is palpable, fewer emotional demands are placed upon Sanz. But he comes good in the poignant audition sequence, as Alex tries to convince himself that they're both on the same page.

The ensemble playing is also effective and it's frustrating that the credits were not more revealing. But that's a minor quibble with Trueba's eighth feature, which drolly riffs on Ale's response to Alex's party suggestion, `That's a good idea for a film not real life,' while also affirming Clavell's contention that `the achievement of happiness requires not the...satisfaction of our needs...but the examination and transformation of those needs'. By the by, the other three `Comedies of Remarriage' that Clavell cites in his key text, Pursuits of Happiness (1981), are It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Adam's Rib. Let's hope none of these were in the bag that Alex tried to flog at the flea market.

THE SHROUDS.

Originally conceived as a Netflix series, David Cronenberg's The Shrouds is his most personal film to date, as it explores the grief the Canadian director experienced following the death of his 66 year-old editor wife, Carolyn Zeifman, in 2017. They had been together for 43 years, but this is also a study of burial customs, family bonds, and global conspiracies, with some typically disconcerting Cronenbergian body horror mixed in for good measure.

On a blind date with Myrna Slotnik (Jennifer Dale), Karsh (Vincent Cassel) explains how he came to own the Toronto restaurant in which they are eating. He had made industrial films before his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), had died of cancer four years earlier. As he had wanted to be in the tomb with her, Karsh had pioneered a way of streaming 3-D images from inside specially made shrouds, so that he could witness the decomposition of the corpse. Realising that others shared his need to remain close to a deceased loved one, Karsh had founded GraveTech and opened cemeteries around the world.

Reluctantly, Myrna agrees to visit Becca's grave. But she is disturbed by the quiet intensity of Karsh'a grief and he reports to sister-in-law Terry (also Diane Kruger) that another bid to meet someone new after four years of mourning has failed. She sympathises with him, but is enjoying her freedom after divorcing Maury (Guy Pearce), the computer expert who had helped Karsh set up GraveTech and who had devised his virtual assistant, Hunny (also Kruger).

As Terry closely resembles Becca, Karsh dreams about his wife that night and relives the problems they had endured maintaining intimacy while she was being treated by Dr Jerry Eckler (Steve Switzman). But he is snapped back into reality when assistant

Gray Foner (Elizabeth Saunders) informs him that several tombstones at The Shrouds have been vandalised. At first he suspects environmentalists who have claimed that his graves leak toxins into the soil. But Karsh discovers that he had been locked out of Becca's account and he closes the restaurant while he works out how to proceed and break the news to the other clients.

Although he had dispensed with Maury's services when he had outsourced his tech needs to a Chinese company, Karsh asks him to crack the encryption placed on Becca's grave. He also asks him why Hunny keeps wanting to appear to him as a koala bear rather than her Becca-like avatar. Terry is frustrated that Karsh has hired Maury, as he keeps trying to control her. But she is fascinated by the conspiracy theories that Karsh entertains, as he tries to work out who has corrupted his system.

Maury discovers that the hackers are based in Iceland, which is one of the places where Karsh plans to expand. However, he is more concerned by small nodules that have appeared on Becca's bones and he consults Eckler's onetime assistant, Dr Rory Zhao (Jeff Yung), who agrees to investigate after confirming that the protrusions have nothing to do with Becca's cancer spreading posthumously.

Mention of the Chinese and Russian involvement in GraveTech's problems turns Terry on and she and Karsh become lovers (after he had sworn to Maury that nothing was going on between them). When Becca next appears in a dream, she bears the scars of a mastectomy, while half of her left arm has been amputated. She hopes Karsh can look past the changes and still see the body he loves. But Becca's hip breaks when they try to spoon, as the cancer has weakened her bones and Karsh is dismayed when she entrusts herself to Dr Eckler.

He appears to have vanished from the hospital and Maury discovers that he has remained in Iceland after addressing a conference. Meanwhile, Karsh has been contacted by a Hungarian tycoon, who wishes to be buried in a camera shroud. He is also keen on investing in a Budapest branch of GraveTech and introduces him to his blind wife, Soo-Min Szabo (Sandrine Holt), who will conduct the negotiations. However, things become complicated when Karsh and Soo-Min become lovers and they bump into her when she is walking a client of her dog-grooming business.

Having discovered that the hackers were not based in Iceland, Maury establishes that the nine violated graves at The Shrouds have been fitted with bugging trackers that would enable the controllers to infiltrate the devices of everyone who accesses the account. However, Soo-Min informs Karsh that her computer people have discovered a glitch in Hunny and accuses Maury of using her to spy on Karsh. Her suspicions are confirmed when Hunny takes on Becca's form in Karsh's next dream and he is furious with her for mocking his grief. He cancels her and thumps Maury, who is angry with Karsh for sleeping with Terry.

She shows Karsh footage of an encounter with Maury that leads her to suggest that he is suffering from a recurrence of schizophrenia. Terry and Karsh also deduce that Maury was responsible for the GraveTech hack and Dr Zhao reinforces the case against him when he claims that the bone nodules are sophisticated trackers. Fearing that he is being spied on, Maury lures Karsh into the woods and shows him that two fingers have been cut off his hand. He posits that the hack was conducted by Russian on behalf of a shadowy cartel that hopes to place bugs in all of GraveTech's cemeteries because Karsh's clients are all rich and powerful and the hack will make all of their data available for mining.

Karsh is inclined to believe Maury, but Terry reveals that he lost his fingers years ago. Not sure who to trust, Karsh is relieved that the damaged graves have been repaired and that GraveTech is back under his control with no adverse publicity leak. However, when he taps into Becca's plot, he is appalled to discover that Ecker's body has been placed in the adjoining grave, which Karsh had purchased for himself. When he tells Terry, she explains that Becca had dated Ecker before they met and that they had embarked upon an affair during her treatment. Karsh asks if Terry believes that he hired a hitman to avenge himself and she is aroused by the notion and they tumble into bed.

Deciding that Becca should remain beside Ecker, Karsh give up his plot at The Shrouds. He also learns that Dr Zhao has a Chinese handler and has been feeding him bogus information about the nodules to try and divert attention away from his own activities. Soo-Min asks Karsh to accompany her to Budapest to complete the GraveTech deal. She kisses him on the plane and he is taken aback when she appears to him with the same scars as Becca and speaking in her voice. When she suggests they get buried together, he agrees and settles in for the journey.

According to interviews, this was to have been the end point of the first episode of the Netflix series, with the second chronicling what transpired in the Hungarian capital. As burial customs vary from country to country, Cronenberg had hoped to set subsequent instalments in other cities, as Karsh seeks to expand his underground empire. But Netflix pulled the plug during the development phase and it seems unlikely that Cronenberg will follow The Shrouds with a sequel.

There have been a handful of horror stories about widowers obsessing over their entombed wives. The best are Mark Robson's Isle of the Dead (1945), the second of the three collaborations between producer Val Lewton and Boris Karloff, and Roger Corman's The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), which was the last of the Edgar Allan Poe yarns the prolific director made with Vincent Price. But, in fashioning his own melancholic love story, Cronenberg goes to much darker places, as he mines his own pain, while also sprinkling the action with some sexual shenanigans and a bit of conspiratorial mischief-making.

The result is engaging without being enthralling, as the MacGuffin is allowed to take on an unnecessary complexity so that Cronenberg can envisage state security services snooping on the dead in order to make it easier to keep tabs on the living. He also struggles to bind secondary characters like Soo-Min and Dr Zhao into the central plot strand, while the paranoid Maury is so sketchily limned so that the script can exploit his unpredictability to keep springing surprises.

Complete with a Cronenbergian barnet and a Toronto accent, Vincent Cassel persuasively conveys Karsh's benumbed response to losing the love of his life, as the success of his business is merely a by-product of the deeply personal desire to share the grave with his beloved. The fact that he keeps envisioning a sex life with Becca makes his trysts with Terry and Soo-Min feel seedily unconvincing. But Diane Kruger and Sandrine Holt splendidly underplay their femme fatality, although Kruger (who replaced Léa Seydoux) is allowed to be a little more flirtatious in voicing the treacherously unreliable Hunny.

The sombrely sinister mood of sepulchral reverence and necrophilic despair is deftly established by production designer Carol Spier and art director Jason Clarke, with

cinematographer Douglas Koch's lighting often being subdued without resorting to lugubriousness. As always, Howard Shore's music is note perfect in highlighting tonal shifts and testing the audience's emotional responses to the calculated shocks built into the material. Clearly enjoying tinkering around with the 3-D tomb-cam technology and the kinky notion of watching a loved body decompose, the 81 year-old Cronenberg directs with a deceptive gravitas that some have suggested treads a line between academic self-reflexivity and mirthless parody. Perhaps this `tomb-with-a-view' saga did need to be a multi-part series in order for all the pieces to slot into place and give Cronenberg the space to put a new dystopian spin on old disturbing themes?

MODÌ: THREE DAYS ON THE WING OF MADNESS.

Following in the footsteps of Gérard Philipe in Jacques Becker's Montparnasse 19 (1958) and Andy Garcia in Mick Davis's Modigliani (2004), Riccardo Scamarcio plays Amedeo Modigliani in Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness, Johnny Depp's second outing behind the camera after The Brave (1997). Depp could easily have taken the role himself after Al Pacino had struggled to find funding for a biopic with Martin Scorsese in the 1980s. But two further bids to float the project, in 1997 and 2012, came to nothing and it was only during the Coronavirus pandemic that Pacino persuaded Depp to assume directorial duties on a script based on the Dennis McIntyre stage play that had first fired Pacino's interest in the Italian painter and sculptor who refused to conform to mainstream convention.

In Paris in 1916, Amadeo Modigliani (Riccardo Scamarcio) makes a few francs sketching customers at a swanky restaurant. He also plays footsie with his society models who delight in flirting with an unkempt charmer. The wife of a general (Sally Phillips) asks him to do her portrait, but Modigliani refuses because she has too much pain in her eyes from being married to a reactionary clod. A fight breaks out, with the head waiter chasing Modigliani with a cleaver. He leaps through stained glass window and flees from a couple of bungling gendarmes to see sanctuary with British art writer, Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat).

She is struggling with an article and refuses to let her lover inside, even though he has cut his painting hand. Taking inspiration from his clash with the military establishment, she goes off to write a piece about bohemian freedom in wartime, leaving Modigliani to cough tubercularly and head for the bar run by Rosalie Tobia (Luisa Ranieri). He seeks out friends Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gouery) and Chaïm Soutine (Ryan McParland), who hope he has the money for another round of drinks and some supper.

Averting another scuffle by telling the ruffians bearing Utrillo above their heads that he suffers from incontinence, Modigliani goes in search of his dealer, Léopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham), in the hope that he has sold some of his work or can give him an advance. Having removed shards of glass from the artist's hand, Zborowski gives him a few francs, while failing to notice that Modigliani has snaffled one of his unfinished busts into his bag. However, he does promise his client that a major buyer has shown interest in his work and that he has high hopes of a lucrative sale.

Having treated his pals to a meal, Modigliani is dismayed to learn that Utrillo (who has had problems with his mental health) has decided to sign up to the army because the strain of making a living as an artist has become too taxing. Passing the recruitment office, Modigliani sees some wounded soldiers on stretchers and throws up before returning to his studio. However, he is haunted by memories of his childhood in Livorno, as well as images of scarred troops and a giant crow in a top hat. He is woken by Beatrice, who has come to pose for him. They chat about her joining him in Italy, but she is nettled when he claims she merely writes about art while he does the real thing.

Nevertheless, Beatrice reclines nude on a divan, while Modigliani captures her in his unique style. She is overwhelmed by the image and they tumble into bed. As they lie together, Modigliani notices a pigeon nesting on his window ledge and wishes his own life was as simple, as he confesses that he finds the grind of being a penniless, undiscovered genius to be exhausting. They are interrupted by the cries of landlady Madame Victoire (Nicky Gouldie), who has been overcome by the stench of the cow carcass that Soutine has stolen from a butcher's shop to paint a still life. Modigliani intervenes on his behalf and claims he is grieving because Utrillo has been killed on the Western Front.

Needing cash, Modigliani joins a musician and his blue-dressed daughter (Anabelle Daisy Grundberg) to wheel a barrow of his wares to exhibit on the park railings. A snooty woman informs him that her four year-old grandson can do better, but a couple of toffs at a café are talked into paying 50 francs for a portrait of the artist's mother. When a small boy admires a picture of a building, Modigliani gives it to him for nothing. Returning home, he browbeats Soutine into cleaning his teeth so they can attend a soirée hosted by Zborowski. He hopes to convince critic Francis Carco (Matthew Wolf) into writing an article on Modigliani, but he is offended by the painter's bluff remarks and sets light to one of his canvases because the time for creation has passed and the future will be dominated by destruction.

Leaving to wander the nocturnal streets with the rumble of the guns audible in the distance, Modigliani hooks up with Beatrice. She is baffled by his insistence on picking fights, but they get cheerfully stoned on a bottle of wine she has stuffed with hash and magic mushrooms. Fireworks light up the sky, as they exchange quotes by Baudelaire and Dante and stumble into a graveyard. He pretends to be a matador and she charges at him, only to vanish and a dazed Modigliani shuffles home with his head filled with memories of his tormented childhood.

Collapsing in his studio, he is roused from a daydream in his bathtub by Beatrice. She wonders where he had disappeared to and he tells her that he felt the wing of madness passing over him and vows never to experience such bad dreams again. He calls on Zborowski, with the intention of accompanying him to his meeting with noted collector, Maurice Gangnat (Al Pacino). When the dealer insists on going alone, Modigliani locks him in his study and gather up a number of canvases to show to Gangnat.

Initially refused entrance to the hotel dining room, Modigliani seats himself at Gangnat's tble and apologises for Zborowski's absence. He reassures the engineer that his work is going to be as valuable as Pablo Picasso's. But Gangnat is more impressed by the fact Modigliani knows Soutine and offers him buttons for his pictures. However, he spots the bust of Beatrice in his bag and he is so moved by its beauty that he offers a vast sum. Modigliani refuses to sell and responds to the accusation that he is nothing special by telling Gangnat that is knows nothing about art and only collects because he is a greedy Philistine.

Furiously disillusioned, Modigliani returns to his studio to find Beatrice waiting for him. She is appalled that he has blown his big opportunity and storms out when he berates her for being a dilettante. Smashing statues and hurling canvases out of the window, Modigliani only pauses when he finds Utrillo crumpled in his closet. He had been invalided out of the army because of his psychological state and he joins Soutine in the courtyard to watch their friend set light to his work and toss it towards them. Eventually, he calms down and Beatrice returns the bust that he had left at her apartment because she needs to distance herself from him. Utrillo and Soutine tag along when Modigliani takes the statue to a bridge over the Seine and chucks it in. He returns to his studio and stands over a large block of marble, as he wonders what to do next.

Claiming to be more interested in Modigliani's spirit than the facts of his life, husband-and-wife screenwriters Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski play fast and loose with historical truth in concocting an art biopic that is mostly as conventional as John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) or Vincente Minnelli's Lust For Life (1956). Depp might toss in the odd gimmick, such as the overused switch to monochrome silent movie pastiche, complete with speeded up chase sequences and florid intertitles. But his approach is pretty traditional in depicting the struggling artist in his garret kicking against the pricks who don't recognise his talent.

He's fortunate in the casting of Riccardo Scamarcio, who may look a little sturdy for someone in Modigliani's condition, but his eyes burn when he talks about his art and when he endures the recollections and premonitions that torment him. Ryan McParland also impresses as the exiled Soutine, with his mangled words and eccentric obsessions, while Antonia Desplat holds her own as the Oxford bluestocking striving to become the Vasari of Montparnasse. What a shame her father, Alexandre, wasn't asked to do the score, as the blend of oompah, klezmer, tango, and bal-musette by Sacha Puttnam, The Tiger Lilies, and others is as cumbersome as the anachronistic inclusion of The Velvet Underground and Tom Waits on the soundtrack. It might have been worse, as Depp dedicates the picture to idol Jeff Beck, while Soutine is clearly supposed to be a kind of Russian variation on Shane MacGowan of The Pogues.

Depp wisely remains off screen, but Al Pacino relishes his cameo as Maurice Gangnat. The accent is slightly stereotypical, but the menace in the voice potently conveys the sense of arrogance and entitlement that Modigliani bridles against in opting to keep his work out of the clutches of someone who sees it as a status symbol rather than a source of beauty and truth. This is a worthwhile message, although one suspects Depp is keener to take a pot shot at critics and those who criticise the artistic lifestyle.

Despite the occasional bit of self-indulgent flamboyance, an over-reliance on melodramatic romanticism, and lurches between larky laddishness and lugubrious languor, Depp's direction has more conviction in this sophomore effort, although he might have devoted more time to Modigliani working. A little more on his vision and technique might also have been helpful, as we see few paintings and just the one piece of sculpture. However, whether filming on soundstages or locations in Hungary and Italy,

production designer David Warren and cinematographers Dariusz Wolski and Nicola Pecorini make intelligence use of Modigliani's tone and palette. He would die in 1920 at the age of just 35, a man who didn't fit in either the Belle Époq ue or the Jazz Age. Yet he dared to be different and, for all its dumbed down bombast and chaotic caricaturing, this manages to be a strangely sincere tribute to Modigliani's refusal to go gentle.