"The Artist and the Model" (The Guardian 13/09/13)

The Artist and the Model (15) 105 mins **

Another movie romanticising the relationship between an aged artist and a younger woman; the usual male-gaze reservations apply, and somehow it’s only more dubious that here it’s a refugee (Aida Folch) being sheltered by a fictional French sculptor (Jean Rochefort) during the Occupation. Shot in that classic-era Blancanieves monochrome, Fernando Trueba’s film is initially ravishing to behold. Yet in the absence of much dramatic heft, such complacent beauty soon wears off; set it against Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, a far more rigorous interrogation of this dynamic, and it’s but a lightly shimmering afterthought.

The Artist and the Model opens in selected cinemas from today.