Best movie of this year hands down!

Fantastic!

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

From the title, you would think that this was a story of terrible abuse and torture. In reality, the heroine has a pretty nice life with Picasso. No real abuse - the dude could be a pain, selfish, and insensitive, but who isn't? Picasso was kind to his other 'families,' and sure, he kept other women around, but if I was Picasso, I would too. If my wife didn't like it, she could just leave. I'm Picasso, I can do whatever I want. The movie was well acted but the story was boring. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen but it didn't. It was well filmed, locations were okay. There should have been more nudity because I'm sure the real Picasso had a studio full of lovely naked girls. That would have made the movie more interesting.

Magnificently crafted exploration of the question, how does a seeming despot generate such passion and devotion from the women around him. The high points are many but what makes the greatest mark is the flawless timing, throughout; then, of course, Hopkins completely lives the lead while McElhone preserves the central conundrum, the impossibility of the relationship(s). Forget the Picasso figure - apart from forming a setting and contributing the element of fame (I almost added "genius" but that's absolutely irrelevant, too), any similar figure would do, quite irrelevant to the point of the story which is to amplify the tension to be found in varying degrees in every one of our relationships. Extremely stimulating and provoking - not a must-see for 80s feminists.

It's 1943 Paris. Pablo Picasso (Anthony Hopkins) is selling paintings to the Nazis and being the famed artist. Françoise Gilot (Natascha McElhone) meets him as an admirer and becomes his long-time mistress. It's turbulent affair and she would have two kids with him. Her grandmother (Joan Plowright) warns her. The other women in his life includes his bitter wife Olga, Dora Maar (Julianne Moore), and Marie-Thérèse who has a daughter with him.This is the wrong subject for Merchant Ivory. Their safe harbor is mannered people trying to restrain their inner turmoil. Picasso's turmoil is not interior. It is exterior. This movie needs flamboyance. Picasso is excessive in every ways. This contrast completely with the reserved nature of a Merchant Ivory movies. Hopkins has the acting power but the movie struggles to harness that power.

The first time I watched this, I didn't really get what was going on. All the plots about Picasso's various wives seemed mixed up and uninvolving.However, now that I am studying Picasso and his women for an AS art module, I can watch the film and feel very satisfied because it breathes a lot of life into the subject. For this reason it is worth having some fore-knowledge or a framework of Picasso's life prior to viewing it, which I guess restrains the target audience somewhat.Hopkins was superb and became Picasso completely in behaviour and physique - even to the extent of shaving his head and wearing brown contact lenses. His accent took a while to take hold though, which I thought was odd, as the early scenes felt very cold and welsh simply because he hadn't quite shaken off his normal speech. This didn't matter after a while though, because his entire manner was actually very well done and really brought out the macho and possessive ego of this wild artist.One major flaw however: Nazi stormtroopers would never march as sloppily as portrayed in this picture.