One Paragraph Movie Review: La Belle Noiseuse/The Beautiful Troublemaker

Thirty-first film: La Belle Noiseuse, or The Beautiful Troublemaker as it is in English, or Four Full Hours Of Very Beautiful, Very Dull, Self-Indulgent Art Wank. I mean, it’s like they meant to make a montage and then forgot to edit it. My main problem with the creative side of my life has always been coming to terms with how self-indulgent it all is, and this movie is about an artist who thinks about himself for four freakin’ hours. For all the bluster that makes us believe artists understand the world better than normal people, fine — they might understand the gesture of a bum cheek or a level of angst not even those of us who have trod on Lego bricks in bare feet can understand. But I reckon unless you have to go through all the stuff the rest of us do — working and cleaning and putting the garbage out and communicating with people even when you don’t feel like it, who gives a stuff if you’ve perfectly understood how a leaf falling off a vine is a metaphor for the transient, adolescently fleeting nature of love. Also I never noticed in art school how annoying the sound of drawing is. One pen and ink going skritch skritch skritch skree out of five.