This film deserves no review. It is the worst movie I have never seen. I voted with my feet and walked out.<br /><br />The filmmakers have taken the foundation of a remarkable story, person, and talent and constructed over this foundation a facade which collapses into a putrid dung heap of bourgeois cliché.<br /><br />Was this one of those classic examples of producers forcing a rewrite into some cretinous drivel they could at last relate to on their own level?<br /><br />If the filmmakers couldn't handle the truth of this story why did they bother at all?<br /><br />The director should reconsider his present occupation and focus his future employment energies with some police-state propaganda ministry where his predilection for "The Big Lie" will play with great appreciation. If he Bowdlerizes his upcoming project about the story of Dorian Gray to a similar extent as this film I can see clearly the denouement - "Shock! Gasp! Horrors! Look at the painting! My God! There! Look! It's a tiny blackhead on the side of his nose!"