Bonus Movie Review: "Fur"

Note: this is not part of the 2012 Film Challenge, but rather a sarcastic movie review that I had sent around to family members a couple of years ago. My mother suggested that it be saved for posterity here. I do not recommend that anyone actually watch this movie.

I watched the movie Fur on a recommendation from a family member who shall go unnamed, and I feel inspired—nay, compelled—to share this powerful experience with the rest of you.

It's only natural to be curious about the lives of the great artists. What were they like? What of their world? Did they trod the earth like us mere mortals, or was their existence as if on some ether plane, with naught to eat but heavenly ambrosia, every day a kaleidoscope of color and delight?

More specifically, one might wonder what it would be like if photographer Diane Arbus had a romantic affair with a genetically challenged man who was covered in hair like some kind of afghan hound. The movie Fur sets out to tell this story, and it tells the hell out of it.

The movie begins with poor fictionalized Diane (portrayed by the graceful Nicole Kidman) having not yet found her muse; she spends her days assisting her average-looking husband in his photography studio, raising her two daughters with good-natured indifference, and conveying her artistic and sexual repression to the world by keeping her collars tightly buttoned and sighing in bathrooms. Her life is thrown into turmoil, however, when a mysterious masked man moves into the apartment upstairs. Her curiosity is aroused, and after some minor stalking she discovers the stranger to be a colossal mop of hair piloted from within by an invisible Robert Downey Jr. What woman would not be intrigued by such a man? The stranger lives in a magical world of whimsy and knickknacks, his apartment full to bursting with beaded curtains, tame animals, incunabula, portraits of famous circus freaks, antique personal irrigation equipment and quill pens. His friends are giants, dwarves, Siamese twins and a woman with no arms who plays the cello with one foot and a chin. Thankfully we only see this armless musician playing pieces which are not very demanding, otherwise she would be obliged to bob her head up and down the strings like some kind of out-of-control chicken. One might well wonder why she din't just take up the drums instead.

Soon Diane's hubby is getting neglected and the children are wearing potato sacks to school. He tries to entice her back into his arms by growing a beard, but it's too little too late. Finally in a moment of rapture the dog-man neighbor instructs Diane to shave off his pelt so that the two can be intimate without lapsing into coughing fits or choking on hairballs. She tackles this Herculean task with aplomb. The viewer is treated to the unforgettable and magnificently unerotic sight of Nicole Kidman shaving a man's hairy ass. Thanks, movie!

Unfortunately, Cousin It's strange genetic condition is also turning his lungs to Swiss cheese, and his days are numbered. As a parting gift to Diane, he blows up an air mattress with the last of his strength and presents it to her as a gift (no, seriously). Later, after he swims off into the sunset, we see her taking little fugitive whiffs of her hairy boyfriend's diseased final breaths from the air mattress. Rhett Butler, eat your heart out.

I would like to thank the anonymous family member for lending me this movie, and I will return it as soon as possible so that others can borrow it for their own edification.