Klimt (film)

Klimt is a 2006 Austrian art-house biographical film about the life of the Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt (1862–1918).^[1] It was written and directed by Raoul Ruiz, with an English screenplay adaptation by Gilbert Adair. The director of photography was Ricardo Aronovich, and the music was composed by Jorge Arriagada.^[2] The title role was played by John Malkovich and the cast included Stephen Dillane. Both a 130 minute long director's cut and a shortened producer's cut of 96 minutes were shown at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.^[2]

Plot

Gustav Klimt's life story unfolds in a series of disjointed sequences in the artist's mind as he lies dying of pneumonia in a Viennese hospital where he is visited by his friend, Egon Schiele (Nikolai Kinski). Themes within the film include Klimt's platonic friendship with Emilie Floege (Veronica Ferres).^[3] Much of the film is centred on Klimt's relationship with Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows), a dancer to whom he is introduced by the film pioneer Georges Méliès.^[4]

Cast

• John Malkovich as Klimt
• Veronica Ferres as Midi
• Stephen Dillane as Secretary
• Saffron Burrows as Lea de Castro
• Sandra Ceccarelli as Serena Lederer
• Nikolai Kinski as Egon Schiele
• Aglaia Szyszkowitz as Mizzi
• Joachim Bißmeier as Hugo Moritz
• Ernst Stötzner as Minister Hartl
• Paul Hilton as Duke Octave
• Annemarie Düringer as Klimt's Mother
• Irina Wanka as Berta Zuckerkandl

Reception

The film was shown at the 28th Moscow International Film Festival^[5] where it was nominated for two awards, winning the Russian Film Clubs Federation Award.^[6]

Philip French, in The Observer described the film as calculatedly enigmatic. Cosmo Landesman, in The Sunday Times, described the film as "frigid and silly" being unnecessarily difficult to follow in the style of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.^[1]

References

External links

• Klimt at the Internet Movie Database