Surviving Picasso

One more chapter in the tasteful, intelligent anticinema of director James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and producer Ismail Merchant (teamed here with David L. Wolper), as well as another celebrity impersonation by Anthony Hopkins. These tried-and-true strains converge in an adaptation of Arianna Huffington’s Picasso: Creator and Destroyer; it’s basically a domestic biopic about how the philandering artist treatedand mainly exploitedhis many mistresses. Most (but not all) of the continental characters, including Picasso and Matisse (a Joss Ackland cameo), are inexplicably furnished with English accents. Not a movie that needs to exist, but it passes the time, and at least Hopkins manages to look like Picasso at odd moments. With Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Peter Eyre, Jane Lapotaire, Joseph Maher, Bob Peck, Diane Venora, and Joan Plowright. (JR)

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