‘Modi – Three Days On The Wings Of Madness’: San Sebastian Review

Dir. Johnny Depp. UK/Hungary/Italy 2024. 110 minutes

As a common rule, the extra revered a display screen actor, the shakier they’re prone to be once they flip their hand to directing (not everyone seems to be a Charles Laughton). By this measure, given the spectacular decline in his crucial and private fame, Johnny Depp ought to face a good likelihood of redemption behind the digital camera. However Modi: Three Days On The Wings of Insanity – a condensed slice of biopic about Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani – is a chaotically unfocused drama that feels uncomfortably like particular pleading concerning the lonely future of the misunderstood artist. The movie premieres in San Sebastián, one fest the place, like Cannes, Depp nonetheless enjoys untarnished status, nevertheless it’s unlikely that this overheated dollop of agony and ecstasy will enhance his inventory both within the media or on the distribution circuit. 

 Stylistically, Depp appears to indulge himself nevertheless he fancies

Depp’s first directing effort, 1997’s The Courageous, is remembered as a critically reviled flop – considerably unfairly, because it had coherence, a sure grace and simple sincerity in its starry-eyed melancholy. Against this, Modi’s ramshackle romanticism by no means remotely convinces, and – on condition that it’s about artists who suffered for his or her radical modernism – it feels terribly dated, stylistically and in content material.

This English-language evocation of Modigliani’s life in Paris throughout World Struggle One reveals the painter as a struggling unknown, touting his work for derisory costs and doing the odd little bit of sketching in cafés. We first encounter ‘Modi’ (Riccardo Sciamarcio) in a single institution, taking part in footsie with a society girl who is simply too tickled to flirt with an arty little bit of tough; then, coming to odds with the employees and snooty clientele, he exits by means of the stained glass window. There follows a Keystone Cops-esque chase, with baton-wielding gendarmes – considered one of many obtrusively mannered makes use of of black-and-white silent-era pastiche. 

In addition to canoodling, philosophising and swapping passages of Baudelaire and Dante along with his lover and mannequin Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat, exuding lofty, husky-voiced heat), Modi hangs out with two different unrecognised greats, Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gouery) and Chaim Soutine (Ryan McParland) – the Three Madcap Musketeers of Montmartre. Depp encourages the trio to overact wildly when collectively, particularly McPartland as a wild-eyed, bug-infested Soutine, a quirkily-accented flip weirdly recalling Andy Kaufman’s Latka character. 

Exterior their firm, nevertheless, Sciamarcio within reason convincing, even when he tends to veer between matinee-idol depth and hyperventilating angst. The movie’s huge actorly trump card, in concept, should be Al Pacino, whose look as collector Maurice Gangnat is continually flagged up as a serious coming attraction, however whose eventual raspy-voiced efficiency is a bit anticlimactic – largely as a result of for as soon as, the star significantly dials down his infamous hoo-hah extra. 

With two main modes, larky and lugubrious, the movie is devoted to the late Jeff Beck, the guitar legend with whom Depp just lately recorded an album – devotion to the rock ‘n’ roll spirit leaking solely too clearly into this movie. Within the manic slapstick of its opening, Modigliani is proven as a punk insurgent of his day and, all through, hardcore Pogues fan Depp glorifies the excesses of boho lowlife in probably the most clichéd approach conceivable – not helped by a script amply peppered with incongruities of tone. (Modi and Beatrice share a bottle of wine laced with “an oz of hash and a shitload of mushrooms”, and fairly why an Italian residing in France would go for dangerous wordplay on ‘artwork’ and ‘fart’ is anybody’s guess). 

Shot in Hungary and Italy, the movie is usually ugly, a lot of it cloaked in a dusty gray pall of half-light. A few of it’s downright crass: a military band drumming up recruits with martial pomp whereas ragged, bloody battle wounded stagger previous; ominous apparitions of a bird-beaked embodiment of loss of life. Stylistically, Depp appears to indulge himself nevertheless he fancies – not least, all of a sudden tossing in snatches of The Velvet Underground and Tom Waits. The music, aside from that, is heavy-handed: an over-expressive smorgasbord of tango, klezmer and beer-garden oompah.

And, creakiness of execution aside, there’s certainly one thing in doubtful style a few rich film star romanticising garret-dwelling poverty, and a person who achieved adulation early in life fantasising about what it should be prefer to go unrecognised in your prime.