58/100
An early, intriguing example of the doc/fiction hybrid, which wouldn’t really take hold for another couple of decades. Roughly half of the film appears to be genuinely candid fly-on-the-wall footage, capturing conversations so intimate and hermetic that “performative” seems off the table. But those scenes are intercut throughout with carefully composed sequences that were clearly staged, or at least partially restaged—when Hockney stops by Celia Birtwell’s flat, and Hazan cuts inside to show her ignoring his cries from the street below, the likelihood of a second camera waiting up there to film her spontaneous response is approximately nil. That recurring tension between truth-seeking and image manipulation obviously echoes Hockney’s work, which I wasn’t previously aware (but am not a bit surprised to discover, given that he co-authored the Vermeer-used-a-camera-obscura theory, though that never comes up here) involved him taking a zillion near-identical photographs in search of the perfect composition to then render partially abstract and fundamentally strange, with exacting attention to optic details but brushwork that’s not remotely photorealistic. Hazan assumes a familiarity with Hockney’s personal life and his inner circle that I don’t in fact possess (had to keep reminding myself that being openly gay was a huge deal back then; learned only afterward that we basically see the birth of the catwalk here), and his attempt to structure the film around Peter Schlesinger’s gradual disillusion and eventual exit lacks sufficient context—we just get occasional shots of Peter moping in the background. I found myself wanting more of Hockney at work and fewer nude-dude interludes, but the latter half of that complaint is just fodder for an Onion bit about Mr. Hetero Man and can be ignored. Looks like the Clash vehicle Rude Boy was Hazan’s only other film of note, which is a shame—you can feel an artistic sensibility permeating every frame of this, and it’s rarely Hockney’s.