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‘Niki’ Review: Charlotte Le Bon Stars in a Pretty but Flimsy Portrait of an Artist Minus Her Art
Focusing on the life of artist Niki de Saint Phalle to the exclusion of her work, Céline Sallette's "Niki" barely scuffs the surface of a deep legacy.
Niki snaps off her borrowed jewels, signs her payment slip and rushes back to the small Paris apartment she shares with her dashing husband Harry (John Robinson) and their infant daughter, who promptly soils the bedspread on which she is plunked down. But despite their free-thinking, progressive leanings and bohemian lifestyle, Niki is assailed by symbolism-heavy flashbacks to a repressed childhood trauma — lurid sequences rendered in an oversaturated palette to differentiate them from the tasteful, sunny arrangements of DP Victor Seguin’s photography in other scenes. The latter was the stunt that established the real de Saint Phalle as a member of a new, rebellious avant-garde; it’s a shame that Sallette’s film, ultimately conventional despite some stylish split-screen and Le Bon’s intricate performance, couldn’t have been just a little inspired by the same spirit of iconoclasm.
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