Sure, lots of writers are famous for being self destructive, substance abusing assholes (Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, and Norman Mailer, to name a few). But a biopic should not simply be a portrayal of an asshole writer doing lots of asshole things in cliched romantic ways as if to excuse his being, oh you know, an asshole. It should be somehow revelatory as to who he is as a complete, fully faceted human being. Even if he's unlikeable, we should still feel the authenticity of his humanity. This movie, however, has not given us a human being. It has given us a caricature.

And let's talk about the dialogue, which is god awful and packed with exposition. Characters continually have conversations that are exclusively designed to give us a cram-course in their backstories. The only thing worse is the dialogue delivering lectures about the exceptional nature of the Artiste (oh yea, make that a capitol A and spell it French, because that's how cliched it is). Naturally, it usually comes down to the Artiste's special license to be, yep, an asshole.

But I will give praise to the cinematographer. It was shot gorgeously.