Goya in Bordeaux (2000)

Goya in Bordeaux is Amadeus meets Girl with a Pearl Earring -- in a dark alley. It's a textured art film about the life of Francisco Goya, who painted grotesques, massacres, and nightmares. (I've loved his work since high school. According to Andre Malroux, "After Goya modern painting begins.") The film opens in a bloody slaughterhouse then begins playing cinematic pattycake with time and space, passing between Goya in his death bed and in his prime. (At one point the two versions of Goya speak with each other.) Admittedly the narrative develops at half the speed of Lost in Translation and fails to focus fully on either his art or his personal life, so we get half as much as we'd like from each. The costuming and soundtrack are exceptional (think Dangerous Liaisons with flamenco) and the married Goya's love for the Duchess of Alba is noteworthy. (Maribel Verdu is a vision, esp. nude.) The battle scenes near the end feel plodding and posed, and we would have been better served with more than a few in-situ recreations of Goya's paintings of grotesque suffering in the political climate of his day (when he laments that literacy is resisted because the powers that be retain their position through calumny and manipulation). I sought this movie out on videocassette because Netflix has not stocked it in some time. 4.5 stars.