{"id":489543,"date":"2025-10-10T23:24:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/489543\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T23:24:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:24:21","slug":"brian-viner-reviews-james-lucas-moss-freud-arguably-britains-most-famous-artist-painting-the-countrys-best-known-supermodel-is-an-intriguing-story-but-this-film-doesnt-tell-it-especially-wel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/489543\/","title":{"rendered":"BRIAN VINER reviews James Lucas’ Moss & Freud: Arguably Britain’s most famous artist painting the country’s best-known supermodel is an intriguing story… but this film doesn’t tell it especially well"},"content":{"rendered":"

By BRIAN VINER, FILM CRITIC<\/a> <\/p>\n

Published: 16:13 EDT, 10 October 2025 | Updated: 16:23 EDT, 10 October 2025 <\/p>\n

Moss & Freud (2025), dir. James Lucas<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/p>\n

Naked Portrait 2002, Lucian Freud\u2019s prosaically-titled painting of supermodel\u00a0Kate Moss<\/a>, was sold at auction 20 years ago for just under \u00a34 million.\u00a0The sale left the art world agog yet is only a postscript to the new movie Moss & Freud, starring Sir Derek Jacobi and\u00a0Ellie Bamber<\/a>, which had its world premiere last night at the London<\/a> Film Festival.<\/p>\n

Written and directed by James Lucas (and executive-produced by Moss herself), the film focuses not on the finished painting but on its creation, and the pair\u2019s evolving relationship.<\/p>\n

Considered one of the greatest figurative artists of the last century, Freud (Jacobi) was 80 when Moss (Bamber) sat for him. Or rather, reclined. On his bed. In the nude.<\/p>\n

As the film tells it, it was her idea to take all her clothes off, a response to his desire \u2018to get to the core of the being\u2019. To her initial consternation, he required her to pose three evenings a week at his Holland Park studio \u2018until it is finished\u2019. The project took him nine months, and in that time (during which Moss found that she was pregnant) they struck up a close friendship somewhat at odds with their age gap of more than 50 years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an intriguing story but Moss & Freud doesn\u2019t tell it especially well, never quite capturing the chemistry between the mighty artist and his beguiling subject. Jacobi is a wonderful actor, of course, in full command of his talents even at 86. And this is not even his first time depicting a great figurative painter: in Love Is The Devil (1998) he played Freud\u2019s close friend Francis Bacon.<\/p>\n

As for Bamber (an excellent Mandy Rice-Davies a few years back in the BBC<\/a>\u00a0series The Trial Of Christine Keeler), she gives the portrayal of Moss a very decent shot. For obvious reasons it\u2019s hard to play a woman famous mainly for her extraordinary looks. Pretty though she is, Bamber doesn\u2019t have a supermodel\u2019s cheekbones. But that\u2019s not the problem. The acting is convincing enough but the sizzle isn\u2019t. I never really believed in them as the unlikely soulmates they are evidently meant to be.<\/p>\n

\"Ellie <\/p>\n

Ellie Bamber (left) and Kate Moss (right) attend a screening of “Moss & Freud” during the 69th BFI London Film Festival at The Curzon Mayfair on October 10, 2025 in London<\/p>\n

\"Kate <\/p>\n

Kate Moss (left) and Ellie Bamber (right) are joined by British acting legend\u00a0Derek Jacobi (centre) at the film’s premiere\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their first encounter is at the National Gallery, to which Freud has been given exclusive access. The meeting has been brokered by Moss\u2019s close friend, Freud\u2019s daughter Bella (Jasmine Blackborow), whose own relationship with her father is decidedly strained. Later, there\u2019s a nice scene in a restaurant where the trio are dining, and Moss contrives an early departure so that father and daughter might bond. But he\u2019s a difficult man, so hard to like (despite flourishes of fun such as standing on his head) that frankly it\u2019s hard to understand why she does.<\/p>\n

The tribulations of his past (not least fleeing Nazi Germany as a boy, and his tempestuous first marriage to the Guinness heiress Lady Caroline Blackwood, of which we see snippets in flashback) strike a chord with Moss, who has demons of her own. Understandably, she finds fame intrusive and overbearing. But too often there\u2019s an eye-rolling artificiality to their conversation – \u2018So tell me about yourself, Lucian…your grandad was Sigmund Freud?\u2019<\/p>\n

This is a shame, because in their different ways they are both iconic cultural figures and it\u2019s fascinating that their paths crossed in the way they did. The film does have its virtues, and offers some compelling titbits of detail, for example that he gave her a tattoo (making Moss, as she says, perhaps the only person in the world with an original Lucian Freud on her thigh). But as a cinematic portrait of a friendship, it\u2019s too heavy-handed by half.<\/p>\n

Moss & Freud is showing at the BFI London Film Festival<\/p>\n

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