Metacritic Film

Klimt

Starring John Malkovich, Veronica Ferres, Gunther Gillian, Paul Hilton, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Dillane, Paul Hilton, and Karl Fischer

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Outsider Pictures
Drama
97 minutes | Color
Austria / France / Germany / UK
Released In Theaters June 22, 2007

Gustav Klimt's eternal search for perfection, eroticism and love are examined in this film, which centers on his passion for Lea de Castro, his struggle for artistic freedom, and his life-long but platonic relationship with Emilie Floge. (Outsider Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Raoul Ruiz
Gilbert Adair (translation: English)
Herbert Vesely (idea)

DIRECTED BY
Raoul Ruiz

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

44 / 100

Critic Reviews

70 The Hollywood Reporter
The result is a pleasingly discursive film that depicts Klimt and the ideals and locales of fin de siecle Vienna.
50 LA Weekly
Ruiz is so intent on harnessing the painter to his own -- here, rather arid -- relativism that he never manages to convey the unfettered eros that brings crowds flocking to exhibitions of Klimt’s work, even as critics hold their noses.
50 Los Angeles Times
Klimt comes alive only fitfully at best, and it seems that for those occasional moments when it comes into focus there is an equal number that are merely silly.
50 The New York Times
The shortened version is lovely to look at, but the stilted dialogue and crude overdubbing in scenes where English is not spoken often make it an impenetrable hodgepodge.
50 TV Guide
Raoul Ruiz's absurdly overwrought phantasmagoria tries to recast the notorious Viennese artist's life as a kind of Divine Comedy: Inferno.
40 Variety Jay Weissberg
Billed as a phantasmagoria rather than a biopic, Klimt falls into the philosophical conundrum it attempts to resurrect -- whether portrait and allegory can coexist. Notwithstanding moments of great beauty, in this case the answer is clearly "no."
25 San Francisco Chronicle Leba Hertz
A good bio of any historical character has to have a compelling story, whether evil or good. Klimt appears to have had that story. I sure would have liked to know what it was.

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