This is a low budget biopic on the life of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It's fairly well done but I find it funny that such an indie movie falls in many of the same narrative pitfalls as its bigger budgeted Hollywood counterparts. I can understand that it's not easy to condense a person's life into a 90 minute movie. To do that you have to romanticize many aspects of someone's life in order to get a coherent movie, but the price you pay is a lack of authenticity and many omissions, those being the reasons why I usually don't like biopics that much. Here, Ondi Timoner portrays her subject as an egotistical and spoiled brat that had a bad temper and a natural talent to take photos and I think there was much more to Mapplethorpe than that. On a positive note it doesn't shy away from it's controversial subject (that would be the true crime of a Mapplethorpe biopic) and I liked Matt Smith in the titular role. All in all this review is harsher than it needed to be and the subject is treated well enough to earn my recommendation but its low budget and overall narrative laziness keep it from being a really good movie.
Review of Mapplethorpe: The Director's Cut
