Documentaries about artists can never entirely crack the code, but a new film about Louise Bourgeois gives us extraordinarily close access to the artist herself. “Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine” is notable for its unvarnished approach.
Assembled from interviews and visits to her studio, the film allows Bourgeois to talk about her work and sometimes talk around it. When pushed to supply details or explanations, she exasperatedly insists that the questioner should do the rest of the work.
This actually strikes me as a totally appropriate response. I have never understood the impulse that expects an artist (or novelist, filmmaker, whatever) to explain his or her work. Either the thing speaks for itself, or it doesn’t. And dare I say that a critic might come in handy at times, too.
Bourgeois, who will turn 97 on Christmas Day, was born and raised in France but has lived in New York City for many decades. Her tartness and severity as an interview subject might be a function of old age, but somehow you suspect her personality was always this forthright.
The film’s most revealing sequence (which directors Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach appear to have incorporated from another source) has Bourgeois recalling a dinner-table humiliation at the hands of her father, and acknowledging that the pain is as fresh now as it was at the time.
Her childhood traumas are absolutely alive, and the film suggest they are the key to the vividness of her work. Her strong sculptures of intertwined hands and arms were inspired by the thought of her father in World War I.
Her father’s infidelity and her mother’s collusion in it seem to feed Bourgeois’ most elaborate sculptural works, some of which can be walked through. A lushly appointed red room is like a collection of childhood anxieties.
The film traces some of her life, including her marriage and her slow acceptance by the critical establishment, but biographical clarity is not the strong suit here. We don’t know why only one of her sons seems to be participating in the film, or how another son died.
However, Bourgeois’ own personality is enough to hold our attention, and the artworks are sensitively photographed — almost as though they are living actors. The eerily well-chosen music includes Mahler and Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman.”
The latter plays as the camera circles Bourgeois’ giant spider sculpture, called “Maman.” Like so many of the film’s choices, this is evocative and apt. This enveloping, spindly-legged creature bears the French word for “mother,” a fact that can stand on its own — maybe an explanation would be too much information.
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