Little Ashes
DRAMA
‘No Rules. No Regrets. No Returns’ promise the breathless ads for Paul Wondrous Oblivion Morrison’s homage to the Catalonian spirit, detailing the relationships between three of Spain’s greatest creative temperaments, notably playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran), filmmaker Luis Buñuel (Matthew McNulty) and artist Salvador Dali (Robert Pattinson). ‘No Good’ more accurately describes this laughable travesty, showcasing a range of shock wigs and wayward ‘I’m from Barcelona’ accents that Sacha Baron Cohen might reject as too comic.
Opening with the foppish but painfully shy teenager Dali arriving in Madrid circa 1922, Little Ashes principally traces Dali’s infatuation with Lorca, an unrequited love which provokes the moustachioed maverick to a full on monkey spanking as he spies the object of his desire getting it on with a female writer.
Disrespectfully stripping the politics out of well documented lives in favour of anonymous, lushly lit compositions, Morrison has made a plodding biopic no great artist would aspire to. Yet by dint of featuring the poster boy of the Twilight series, Little Ashes will find a far bigger audience than it deserves. Pattinson may well draw in tween audiences, but even the most lovestruck schoolgirl is unlikely to be impressed by the cartoonish art-history portrayed here.
GFT, Glasgow, Fri 12–Sun 14 Jun.