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Film

Indie Flicks: The pigments of pessimism

By STEVE PERSALL
Published May 11, 2006

Art School Confidential (R) (102 min.) - Judging from his films, Terry Zwigoff thinks the glass is half empty, that mirrors are made to be broken and ladders should be opened wide to allow as many characters as possible to walk underneath. Hard-luck misanthropes can be fun when the personalities are remarkable, such as Bad Santa and Zwigoff's documentary Crumb. Otherwise, it is just a bunch of unappealing characters bouncing glib nihilism off each other.That describes Art School Confidential, as it did Zwigoff's previous adaptation of a Daniel Clowes comic book, Ghost World. Both films showcase young adults who want the world to cater to their whims but do little to earn it. Clowes' comics suggest that he is intimately familiar with such self-absorption, and he has found a kindred spirit in Zwigoff. Perhaps the movies are too much of an inside joke, appreciated only by those who share their dark perspective. That's a club I wouldn't wish to join.The hero, so to speak, of Art School Confidential is Jerome Platz (Max Minghella, Bee Season), introduced as a child being beaten by bullies, drawing unflattering pictures of them, and being beaten again. Jerome dreams of being like his idol, Pablo Picasso, a great artist bedding beautiful women. Attending Strathmore Institute art school seems like a good place to start, especially with all the nude models it promises.

What Jerome finds is a fractured society of geeks, weirdos and professors more concerned with their failed careers than with prepping students. It's like any other passive-aggressive, anti-authoritarian teen comedy, only with paint and charcoal. A parallel plot about a strangler in the neighborhood eventually dovetails into Jerome's predicaments, creating a late revelation that some artists will do anything to become famous. Stop the presses.

Minghella is a bland actor, leading with his eyebrows, while Sophia Myles (Tristan & Isolde) doesn't seem desperate enough to be attracted to him. It's part of the geek fantasy that Zwigoff and Clowes embrace but seldom cloak in either the irony or fantasy that could connect it to anyone else. The film's sharpest observations are offered by old pros, played by John Malkovich and Oscar winner Jim Broadbent, who are burned out by their failures and overly impressed with their talent and who despise anyone who thinks that following in their footsteps is a good idea. The students might be more successful and that hurts, so they deflect that pain back to protégés.

Zwigoff does the same to the audience, although I'm not sure we deserve it. Art School Confidential is too smug about its satire, too pedestrian with its comedy and too scattered for us to grasp what the filmmakers hoped to accomplish. Those qualities deserve a screening at Strathmore, where confusion or over-simplification are celebrated, but not at neighborhood theaters. D

- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic

[Last modified May 11, 2006, 10:45:11]