Has a film about an artist ever received a drubbing as bad as Moss & Freud? The movie, released in May in the UK, centres on the unlikely friendship forged in 2001 between the reclusive late artist Lucian Freud and the then 27-year-old Kate Moss when the pregnant supermodel sat for Freud’s Naked Portrait (2002). Hyperallergic declared: “The best part of Moss & Freud is when it’s over,” before adding, “At worst, it is a film that openly celebrates an exploitative relationship between artist and muse.” The Financial Times called it “a big bore”, The Guardian lamented its “legacy-controlling blandness” and our own reviewer labelled the characters “hollow caricatures”. However, The Telegraph quite liked it, saying the movie is “glossy and watchable”. But we’ll leave the last word to The Times: “The film is mostly a series of desultory conversations between two vacant automatons who bleat out pretentious undergraduate garbage about the nature of painting and photography.” Don’t hold back!
