Johnny Depp’s return to directing brings a boring biopic about a tortured artist

Johnny Depp hasn’t directed a feature film (his 50-minute music video for “Unloveable” doesn’t count) since he starred in Bold in Cannes in 1997 and it didn’t go well. Considering that unfortunate experience, one has to wonder what was going on Modi, three days on the wing of madness — a portrait of Amedeo Modigliani, a painter and sculptor famous for his talent, as well as for his love of drugs, promiscuity and scandalizing heterosexuals — could have prompted the actor to reach for the virtual megaphone again.

Perhaps Depp saw a kindred spirit in Modigliani? After all, Depp is also known for his talent, but also for his self-indulgence, which was thrown into a particularly glaring, unflattering light during his bitter legal battle with his ex, Amber Heard. Still, there are plenty of other wild, drug-addled geniuses or near-geniuses he could have chosen to sanctify in cinema. Charles Baudelaire, for example, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge, none of whom have been so eminently selected for biographies.

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It turns out that, according to press notes for the film, Depp’s friend and former partner was supposed to direct the project at one point. Donnie Brasco co-star Al Pacino, who instead has a key but supporting role as art collector Maurice Gangnam. Pacino suggested Depp take the lead instead of him, and that appears to have been the case.

All this may explain why Modi, three days on the wing of madness is, despite the flowery title and the bad behavior on screen, a strangely bland package. Okay, yes, there is a road trip sequence in which our hero, known as Modi (Riccardo Scamarcio), swills wine laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms and hashish with his girlfriend Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat) and begins to see strange shapes in the sky, as well as sinister apparitions. The two also argue a lot, and curses are hurled along with the dishes and works of art that Modi intends to destroy. But that is not Fear and Loathing in Montmartre. Ultimately, it’s basically a period piece for arthouse cinema, but with more body fluids and property damage.

At least Modi It will probably go better than Modigliani, a 2004 feature-length biopic starring Andy Garcia and prone to the cheesy “Oh, hello, Pablo!” dialogue that is typical of such productions. Modigliani did indeed know Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Juan Gris and all those early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde hepcats. But the script here—the cumbersome credits attribute it to Jerzy Kromołowski and Mary Olson-Kromołowski, but based on a play Modigliani by Dennis McIntyre and “with additional material by Johnny Depp, Stephen Deuters, Jason Forman and Sam Sarkar” — almost everyone is kept offstage.

Instead, Modigliani’s inner circle during the 72 hours of his life that we see here consists, as you might expect, of artist friends Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gouery) and Chaim Soutine (Ryan McParland), his art dealer Leopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham), and the aforementioned Hastings, who was a journalist-critic and Modi’s lover, model, and roommate circa 1916, when the story takes place.

Strictly speaking, in terms of contemporary narrative, Hastings is probably a better choice for a love interest than Jeanne Hebuterne, a much younger woman than Modi who married him shortly after the events depicted in Modiand she was so devoted to him that she committed suicide, heavily pregnant, days after he died of tuberculosis in 1920. Beatrice Desplata, on the other hand, is a more believable modern woman before her time, doggedly focused on her career. When we first meet her here, she’s shutting Modi down because she has a deadline and doesn’t want his distracting drama at the moment. Later, when he says he’s a real artist and she’s just writing about art, she rightly throws a blunt object at him. I, for one, identify with him completely.

The film is generally quite dismissive of any character who dares to have anything less than a passionate, uncritical enthusiasm for Modigliani’s work, which, incidentally, can be read as a preemptive affront to us mean old critics. Beatrice is an exception, which makes her character all the more likeable. The impeccably cast Desplat deftly exudes Hastings’ intelligence, uncertainty, and fragile codependency with her lover. She even looks quite like a woman with her eyes closed and her cheeks flushed in Sitting nakedThis painting is now in the Courtauld Gallery in London. It is believed that Hastings was the model for it.

In fact, Hastings Desplata is interesting enough and underrepresented as a historical figure in cinema that some viewers might sigh with frustration when she’s not on screen. Much of the running time is spent painting a very traditional icon, practically gesso on wood, of another tortured male genius. Scamarcio is charismatic enough to command attention, but Modi’s trajectory here—counting down for days while he waits to make an offer to the famous collector Gangnat—doesn’t take us very far toward understanding what motivates him, or even why we should care.

As with many paintings about artists, whether visual artists, composers, or even writers, Modi, three days on the wing of madness doesn’t dare to take craft, application, and technique seriously, or any of the nitty-gritty details that really make their work important. This kind of kitsch is more interested in the really irrelevant drivel of a sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll biopic, and the film doesn’t even pay the real Modigliani the compliment of securing the rights to show any of his real works. All the works we see, as far as I could gather from the credits, are passable but not entirely convincing pastiches.

More investment seems to have gone into acquiring the rights to include snippets of Velvet Underground and Tom Waits songs. One suspects that this is the kind of art Depp really likes, though it’s pleasing that the film gives work to British cabaret act the Tiger Lillies, who provide a delightful oompa-pah oompa-pah noodling soundtrack reminiscent of the brass band melodies in Emir Kusturica films.

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