Savage Messiah

Ken Russell's 1972 British film covers the relationship between the young sculptor Henri Gaudier and the writer Sophie Brzeska, twenty years his senior, in the Paris of the 1910s. They join their surnames and begin working together; the relationship is not sexual but built entirely on production. The film is far from the customary tone of artist biography. Gaudier shouts, steals and is constantly in conflict; Russell shows him not as a genius but as intolerable, and his talent does not excuse it. Helen Mirren appears in an early role. Russell's known excess is partly reined in here, while the energy of the scenes and the rhythm of the cutting stay high. The result is a film against the romanticising of art. Who it's for: those who like Ken Russell's cinema and artist biography. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a measured telling; the film is built on shouting, excess and nudity.