American Psycho director Mary Harron has made a portrait of Salvador Dalí in his sunset years; all moustache and megalomania, it stars Ben Kingsley, a formidable screen presence whose actorly manner is perfect for the role of a man who grandiosely talks about himself in the third person. “Dalí abhors spinach!” The cleverness of Kingsley’s performance is the twinkle in his eye that leaves you wondering whether Dalí has disappeared entirely up his own myth. How much of the eccentricity is a put-on, brazen self-publicity to maximise sales?
Disappointingly, the script invents a fictional art school dropout to be our guide to Dalí’s universe. This is James Linton (newcomer Christopher Briney) a wide-eyed young gallery assistant in New York sent with an envelope stuffed full of cash to the pay the bill at Dalí’s hotel.
It’s 1974, and walking into the suite in the middle of the afternoon, James finds it full of partying clingers-on and sycophants. Dalí takes a shine to the young assistant and “borrows” him to help out at an important exhibition. It’s soon clear to James that it’s Dalí’s wife, Gala (Barbara Sukowa), who runs the show; she’s spouse, muse, art dealer, defender and tormentor rolled into one fierce package. And the film’s most interesting material deals with the ending of the Dalís’ long, complicated marriage. (In flashbacks to their early days Dalí is played by Ezra Miller.)
James is warned to politely decline if Gala – in her 70s if she’s a day – makes a pass at him. She does. (Her current squeeze is the 23-year-old star of Broadway’s Jesus Christ Superstar.) Another actor might have played Gala as ridiculous and delusional, but Sukowa gives her real fire in a performance that’s more than a match for Kingsley’s. With a sparkier script, these scenes from a crumbling marriage might have been fascinating. But Dalíland is a more run-of-the-mill drama about young James’s education, with a level of unoriginality that would surely have appalled Dalí as much as spinach.
• Dalíland on the Icon Film Channel from 11 September and from 13 October in UK cinemas.
