Pasolini

(Not rated)

A film rebel’s portrait of a kindred spirit

For an Abel Ferrara movie, Pasolini is “startlingly restrained,” said Peter Bradshaw in TheGuardian.com. Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was a Ferrara hero, and usually the acolyte displays “the same authentic flair for transgression.” Here, Willem Dafoe plays Pasolini during his final days: He gives a foreboding interview, lunches with his mother, and tends to the completion of a film marked by sexual violence. Finally, after picking up a young man for a tryst, he is murdered, at 53. “More of an essay than a biopic,” Ferrara’s portrait also dramatizes scenes from a novel and movie that Pasolini never completed, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. “The splendor of Pasolini” is that it becomes a collaboration between its subject and Ferrara, the director of Bad Lieutenant. Still, it’s “more interesting in theory than achievement,” said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. Unfortunately, “Pasolini will be both a chore and a bore for anyone not already versed in this singular artist’s history.” ■