Moss & Freud
Lucian Freud paints Kate Moss in a shallow reconstruction of how his ‘Naked Portrait 2002’ came about.
Derek Jacobi as Lucian Freud and Ellie Bamber as Kate Moss
Image courtesy of Vertigo Releasing.
by MANSEL STIMPSON
Back in 1991 Jacques Rivette made a film entitled La belle noiseuse in which Michel Piccoli took the role of a painter working with a nude model (Emmanuelle Béart). It was a detailed study of what it means to be an artist in this field and of the enormous amount of work that it can entail. There are those – and I count myself among them – who regard this as cinema's most successful attempt to capture what this kind of endeavour can involve both for the painter and the sitter. Now we have a film that dramatises what happened when in 2001 the highly successful model Kate Moss agreed to sit for the painter Lucian Freud, a long undertaking which when finished yielded the acclaimed painting ‘Naked Portrait 2002’.
To mention La belle noiseuse in this context may seem inappropriate, even absurd, since despite the comparable elements inherent in the subject matter, Rivette’s film was a French subtitled work that belonged to arthouse cinema. In contrast, Moss & Freud, a work which marks the feature film debut of writer/director James Lucas, is clearly aimed at the mainstream and just how differently these ventures were conceived is summed up by the fact that Rivette's film had a challenging running length of virtually four hours. Nevertheless, comparing the two works underlines the key weakness of Moss & Freud in that, despite the endeavours of its two leading players, it emerges as a work without real depth. What it offers is shallow.
Kate Moss is herself one of the film’s executive producers and in it Ellie Bamber portrays her while Derek Jacobi appears as Lucian Freud. Although born in Berlin, Freud, whose parents were both Jewish, had come to London with his family in 1933 and six years later he took on British nationality. He would become one of this country's most distinguished painters with portraiture central to his art and especially naked ones (his very first full-length nude appeared in 1966). It was in 1974 that Kate Moss was born in Croydon and she would take up modelling at the age of fourteen and soon acquire iconic status. Celebrated as both Freud and Moss were, it seemed a strange link-up of two utterly contrasted worlds when Freud indicated that he would like to paint her.
The fact that Freud took so long over each painting meant that his daughter, Bella (Jasmine Blackborrow), had to enlighten Kate that, if she were indeed to sit for her father for three evenings each week, it might well take a whole year before the painting would be completed to the artist’s satisfaction. Indeed, when the settings went ahead it took so long that the two of them spent so much time together that a bond grew up between them. Despite their very different backgrounds, their unconventional lifestyles did to an extent give them something in common. A stickler for disciplined work and commitment Freud could become angry if his sitter was even a few minutes late but the fact that Moss led the high life of a celebrity with much partying and a range of lovers meant that her lifestyle echoed in some respects his own wild days. The latter were epitomised by his opium taking in the Paris of the 1930s and by his long-lasting reputation as a womaniser. Whatever drew them together was in contrast to that: the film shows Kate Moss disenchanted by the way in which her work and fame pushed her constantly and ready to appreciate a non-sexual rapport with a man old enough to be her father.
The title Moss & Freud is one that needs to be read as indicating that whatever biographical details emerge the focus here is on the months when she was posing for him. But, while the sittings are strongly featured, there are only glimpses of the work itself and, although it eventually emerges as a full-length large-scale view of a pregnant reclining figure, we get little sense of all the inner workings of the kind so revealingly explored in Rivette's film. There is certainly talk of the art of painting and quotes from an article written by Freud for the magazine ‘Encounters’. Even so, a statement that nudity in a painting gets to the core of a sitter’s being and thus provides a deep truth is not something that is then elaborated on in a meaningful way. There is another quote at the start suggesting that a painter is inspired by the promise of complete happiness in creation even though any such happiness disappears before a work is completed. Yet despite such ideas being mentioned one does not get any deep insights into Freud's painting and when Kate Moss declares that Freud taught her a lot you rather wonder what she has in mind.
Subsidiary elements such as the relationship that developed between Kate Moss and a journalist named Jefferson Hack (Will Tudor) may lead to Kate having a baby, but they add little of value to the film. The same applies to flashbacks included which involve Freud's wife Lady Caroline Blackwood (Lauren O'Hara). When it comes to directing, James Lucas has an adventurous spirit which is displayed in his use of montage and intercutting but it also at times leads him to go over the top. As for the actors, while Jacobi does his best, he has the misfortune to be playing a painter just after we saw Ian McKellen portraying a fictional one in The Christophersand it is all too obvious that McKellen had the better role. The one triumph here belongs to Ellie Bamber who shows an ability to capture the character of Kate Moss in a way that does not rely on the words but creates a real sense of the person who could indeed be what Kate Moss was a quarter of a century ago. By her sense of presence which brings this figure to life from the inside Bamber does all that can be done to challenge the lack of depth which otherwise, alas, makes this feel a decidedly superficial work.
Cast: Ellie Bamber, Derek Jacobi, Will Tudor, Jasmine Blackborrow, Lauren O’Hara, Tim Downie, Richard Crouchley, Milan Borach, Nigel Corbett, Dolcie Ellison, Caty Harty, Amber Lily Butterworth.
Dir James Lucas, Pro Matthew Metcalfe, Norman Merry and Maile Daugherty, Screenplay James Lucas, Ph Maria Inés Manchego, Pro Des Ross McGarva, Ed Nick Carew, Music Karl Sölve Steven, Costumes Sara Beale, Kate Moss and James Brown.
Matthew Metcalfe/GFC Films/Head Gear Films/Metrol Technology/Embankment Films/Lipsync Productions-Vertigo Releasing.
100 mins. New Zealand/UK/USA. 2025. UK Rel: 29 May 2026. Cert. 15.
