Surviving Picasso (1996)
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33% of critics liked it
(18 reviews) -
57% of users liked it
(3,967 ratings)
This unusual biography of the renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is a Merchant-Ivory film. The team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has been responsible for many period dramas, including A Room with a View and Howard's End. The story of… More This unusual biography of the renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is a Merchant-Ivory film. The team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has been responsible for many period dramas, including A Room with a View and Howard's End. The story of Picasso's remarkable misanthropy is told as experienced by his mistress Francoise Gilot (Natasha McElhone). Francoise was Picasso's lover from 1944 to 1954, and they had two children together, Claude and Paloma. The film shows Picasso (Anthony Hopkins) as a notorious womanizer, with flashbacks revealing his relationships with his wife Olga (Jane Lapotaire), the artist Dora Marr (Julianne Moore), and Marie-Therese Walter (Susannah Harker), an earthy type who sees the artist only on Sundays. Hopkins powerfully portrays Picasso as an artistic genius with an appalling habit of using and abusing women. He not only cheats on his wife but two-times his mistresses. Francoise has survived an abusive relationship with her father (Bob Peck), and she is 40 years younger than Picasso when they become lovers. The film was supposed to be based on Gilot's book Life with Picasso, but the filmmakers were unable to get the rights to it, so they settled for basing the film on Arianna Huffington's Picasso: Creator and Destroyer. The movie also uses imitations rather than Picasso's real paintings. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi
- Directed By
- James Ivory
- Genres
- Drama, Romance
- In Theaters
- Sep 4, 1996 Wide
- Studio
- Warner Home Video
Critic Reviews
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Daniel M. Kimmel, Variety
...a stunning debut by Natascha McElhone...
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Nick Davis, Nick's Flick Picks
Ambition notwithstanding, Surviving Picasso fails prodigiously, mostly out of its own confusion over who it is about and what it wants to say.
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Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Covers ten turbulent years in the life of this major luminary of 20th century art.
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Cast
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Anthony Hopkins
as Pablo Picasso
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Natascha McElhone
as Francoise
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Julianne Moore
as Dora Maar
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Joss Ackland
as Henri Matisse
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Peter Eyre
as Sabartes
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Diane Venora
as Jacqueline Roque
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Jane Lapotaire
as Olga Picass
- Dennis Boutsikaris
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Joseph Maher
as Kahnweiler
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Bob Peck
as Francoise's Father
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Joan Plowright
as Francoise's Grandmother
- Dominic West
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Peter Gerety
as Marcel
- Thomas Fisher
- Andreas Wisniewski
- Susannah Harker
