By Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear, we haven’t explored the misunderstood artist in weeks! How can we ever empathize with the tortured life of a painter if it is not explained to us at least once a month? And he’s bad with money, too? Shocking! Why that clichéd trope is worth at least a couple pesos … so long as they don’t come from the artist himself.
Renzo (Luis Brandoni) is an artist. I suppose you have to be an artist with a name like “Renzo.” And he’s a jerk. A Grade A USDA certified jerk. Actually, I suppose that “ADA” certified, we are in Buenos Aires, after all. If My Masterpiece were only about Renzo, I think you’d start to cry; he’s colorful, but the act wears thin fast. There’s a good reason he’s alone in life: he alienates people as if he’s trying to win a contest. Yes, this leads to some good stuff – like his deliberate self-sabotages to demonstrate that his vision is not for sale. Quite frankly, if I knew the artist in a fit of petulant rage entered the gallery after the fact for the sole purpose of shooting his own panting, I’d buy that painting on the spot.
This artist, however, is twenty years removed from his heyday and struggling to make ends meet. Only his agent, Arturo (Guillermo Francella) knows it. Scratch that. Only Aruturo appreciates it. Renzo knows damn well he doesn’t have money, but undermines any cash vacas in his dirección. Take, for instance, the hilarious tutor sequence when Renzo reluctantly accepts a new art student, tasks him to sit in a room for two hours staring at stuff, then asks him to strip the room clean, afterwards asking the student to recreate the room entirely from memory, and finally, after the tasks have been dutifully executed, Renzo chastises the man for following orders. “You haven’t got an artistic temperament.”
The film begins with Arturo confessing to us that he’s killed a man. You certainly have my attention, movie. When we flashback to Arturo’s relationship with Renzo, we start piecing together the “how?” and “why?” Despite being friends for decades, Arturo can’t stand Renzo’s antics, either. And when Arturo can no longer sell Renzo’s art –often not because the art is bad, but because Renzo takes great pains to alienate those who might pay him—the obvious comes to mind: Arturo owns Renzo’s art. Renzo prohibits his art from being sold. If Renzo were dead, however, his art could not only be sold, but sold at a markup because it is now in limited supply. I think we can figure out where this film is going, no?
You start off with a murder confession and an unbalanced jerk taking a loaded gun to a gallery and murdering two paintings, how do you go wrong from that? I’m not sure, but My Masterpiece found a way. The last hour of the film, while not entirely predictable, left me pretty empty. It’s like the film ran out of good stuff and polled the crew, “so what do you think would happen next?” and went with a consensus view. After the first ten minutes, I was ready to love My Masterpiece, yet by the conclusion, I couldn’t even recommend it.
A master lives for a desire to rebel
But what to do when your vision won’t sell?
If you’re gonna depart
And die for your art
Why not make a few bucks as well?
Not Rated, 100 Minutes
Director: Gastón Duprat
Writer: Andrés Duprat, Gastón Duprat
Genre: Troubled artist, troubled script
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Perhaps those who have had to endure misunderstood genius
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “Same old, same old. In oils instead of watercolors.”
