R
obert Mapplethorpe went from “Hello, nice to meet you” to “Let’s see your cock” faster than a nymphomaniac hooker. Seriously. As the film wore on, I started anticipating it: Ok, there’s a new guy walking down the street … and there Mapplethorpe spies him, tees him up, confronts him … how long until he asks him to take down his pan –OH! There it is! Geez, that took less time than for Taylor Lautner to go shirtless in a Twilight film.
You won’t believe this, but the first thirty minutes of this film is relatively flesh free. I was almost offended. Look, I know next-to-nothing about the artist Robert Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith), but it’s hard to find a Mapplethorpe photo without nudity. Be careful what you wish for.
Picking up the story in 1969, collegiate Robert Mapplethorpe is heterosexual and in ROTC, two things which seem outrageous to me. Don’t worry, both will disappear before long. His NYC meetcute with Patti Smith (Marianne Rendón) is exactly that – she’s ducking an aggressive would-be suitor by pretending the unknown stranger is her boyfriend. Before long, the two actually are a couple. Patti is also an artist, which means she and Robert quite literally live on her lucrative bead necklace enterprise. Robert is happy, but restless … and curious. He visits Stonewall just for a peek; he thieves a magazine of explicit male genetalia, carving it up for his own art. This is satisfactory until a fellow slumhole tenant introduces him to :shudder: a shutter. Suddenly, for the patience-challenged Mapplethorpe, a true love affair is born.
I cannot help wondering if this film would be better off as a documentary. First off, Matt Smith looks fortysomething even when playing a teen. What I took more from the sixties scene is how skeletal people appeared rather than how dated the setting. Next, Mapplethorpe himself comes across as fleeting and hedonistic for most of the film. However pleasant and calm he could appear, his life seemed controlled by how quickly he could make an acquaintance of John Thomas, Dick, or Willie. Arriving at the Mapplethorpe screening, I honestly knew nothing, not one single thing, about the man himself. However, when he and Patti pledged eternal love five minutes in, my brain pretty much said, “Odds are 1,000,000 to one against this being the film’s conclusion.” Sure enough, within ten minutes, Patti’s had enough of Robert’s quest for fire hose. “But if you leave, I’ll turn gay!” whines Mapplethorpe as she waks out the door. HAH! That’s rich.
Patti does leave, however, opening up Robert’s extensive hobby of photodonging. Try not to forget that this is the man who, for all intents and purposes, essentially invented the dick pic. My general impression of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe is the following: always use black & white film and then take pictures of a penis, a big fat quasi-erect penis; if it can’t be a penis, it ought to look like a penis or at least suggest a penis; after that, gosh, well, there ought to at least be a suggestion of sex. And if none of that applies, you failed photography.
Mapplethorpe left me a little cold. I can’t say I loved the man when his wide-eyed wang-derlust took shape, so when he evolves into a coked-up dismissive self-important cynic, I can’t say such suddenly endeared the man to me. The film also makes it seem like Robert Mapplethorpe had not a bold, artistic vision so much as a phallic obsession. Is that really the way we want to see the man? Not so much as a champion of LGBTQ or a groundbreaking talent, but a lustful partyboy? I didn’t hate the film, but I sure can’t recommend it, either … even to the Stonewall crowd he honored so.
There once was a man who’d become
A world class presenter of bum
But he preferred the shaft
And when questioned, he laughed
“There’s more where that came from”
Not Rated [read: whatever you would rate an indulgence of cocks], 102 Minutes
Director: Ondi Timoner
Writer: Ondi Timoner and Mikko Alanne and Bruce Goodrich
Genre: Pushing the envelope … and then filling it with dick pix
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Believers in freedom of expression
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Mike Pence
