{"id":684318,"date":"2026-06-04T17:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T17:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/684318\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T17:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T17:43:12","slug":"the-best-part-of-moss-and-freud-is-when-its-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/684318\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Part of \u201cMoss and Freud\u201d Is When It\u2019s Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cond\u00e9 Nast kills<\/a> another flock of print mags. The Venice Biennale is a bust<\/a>. Jeff Bezos reigns<\/a> over the Met Gala, smugly stuffed into a black tux. Given the state of the art and fashion world today, who could deny the allure of early aughts nostalgia? Therein lies the obvious appeal of Moss and Freud<\/a> (2025), a new film about the unlikely friendship between supermodel Kate Moss and portraitist Lucian Freud.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More a glitzy buddy film than traditional biopic, James Lucas\u2019s debut directorial feature is as frivolous as Fendi fringe, as puffy as a Rodarte sleeve. And that is its only redeeming quality. At best, it is a toothsome, predictable film about intergenerational bonding. At worst, it is a film that openly celebrates an exploitative relationship between artist and muse. In either case, Moss and Freud makes The Devil Wears Prada II<\/a> (2026) feel like cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 \u2014 so implausibly shallow are its characters, so hopelessly hackneyed are its dialogue and plot.<\/p>\n

Moss and Freud is best when it revels in excess \u2014 from smoke and sweat-filled late-night dance clubs to empty splits of champagne strewn across a greenroom. In the first shot, set late at night, Moss (Ellie Bamber) blazes down a coastal British highway, her hair wind-whipped and her torso swallowed up by hungry rabbit fur. Managing to successfully speed, smoke, and drive stick \u2014 all while dodging the attention of the coppers \u2014 she epitomizes an irresistibly reckless decadence. Seconds later, after a set of compulsory drone shots of London at dawn, Moss\u2019s stilettos glide up the staircase of the National Gallery. The museum is empty, aside from a solemn older man who, we\u2019re quickly apprised, is none other than famous painter Lucian Freud (Derek Jacobi). \u201cWhen one is naked, there is no hiding,\u201d he intones, as they stare at the nude, if chaste, goddess in Titian\u2019s \u201cDiana and Actaeon\u201d (1556\u201359). \u201cOnly truth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Film still of Moss and Freud, directed by James Lucas <\/p>\n

The maxim is but pretext for Freud\u2019s proposition: pose for him (sans attire) as the subject of a new portrait. While initially reticent due to a packed calendar of runway shows, photoshoots, and otherwise enviable libertinism, Moss agrees a few months later, tiring of the lifestyle that has, as many of us remember (but goes unmentioned in the film), earned her the epithet \u201cCocaine Kate.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, Freud is an artist with grand ideas whereas Moss is but a commercial model. After all, \u201cpainting is quite sensual,\u201d as she puts it, admiring the Titian. After all, as the film later relays, painting is also \u201cpsychological,\u201d \u201cbiological,\u201d and \u201cvery meaningful.\u201d Watching such scenes, I had to remind myself that I was watching a film, and not evaluating an especially sad excerpt of my first-year students\u2019 writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been doing different things,\u201d Moss confides to a new lover, an enamored magazine editor. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing things differently.\u201d Such platitudes are no less vapid from a pretty mouth. Whether chain-smoking in a five-star suite or casually disrobing at Freud\u2019s tony manse, Bamber lacks the impetuous charisma and nicotine grit of the South London-reared woman she portrays. She also, significantly, looks little like Moss; her presence doesn\u2019t summon memories of heroin chic so much as willowy, wide-eyed Botticelli.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Film stills of Moss and Freud, directed by James Lucas <\/p>\n

Despite their difference in class, Moss and Freud share a degree of privilege they are all too glad to squander. See Moss enjoin her Black taxi driver to enter a club in his skivvies and undershirt; it\u2019s \u201cS & M Night\u201d and singles aren\u2019t allowed. See Freud convince a waitress to quit her job to pose for his new painting; no mention of whether this \u201cbutcher\u2019s daughter\u201d is ever compensated. It would be one thing if we were invited to both revel in and judge this duo\u2019s flagrantly bad behavior, but that\u2019s not the kind of film this is. This is a film that firmly believes its anti-heroes are heroes. Moss isn\u2019t an insouciant, smart-ass fashion gadfly; she\u2019s a woman looking for the right man to get her sober (or plant a baby in her flat abdomen \u2014 whichever comes first). Freud isn\u2019t a womanizing Holocaust survivor who takes his trauma out on those he loves most; he\u2019s a Great Man who magically sees the \u201ctruth\u201d in young women like Moss, which they themselves evidently cannot.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the film\u2019s final act, Freud explodes at Moss for being eight minutes late and not respecting his schedule. \u201cI paint and I paint and I paint some more,\u201d he screams, as though she (and we) aren\u2019t painfully aware that this is what, by definition, all painters do. A more honest film would have at least gestured at the extractive tendencies of both the fashion industry and the fine art world. But Moss and Freud resists such complexity, preferring trite revelations to real insight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art,\u201d reads the film\u2019s opening epigraph, credited to Freud. \u201cThe promise of it is felt in the act of creation, but then disappears toward its completion.\u201d Just in case we missed it the first time, these words are spoken in breathy voiceover by Moss at the end of the film \u2014 a completion for which I, for one, was admittedly all too happy.<\/p>\n

\"\"Film still of Moss and Freud, directed by James Lucas <\/p>\n

Moss and Freud<\/a>, directed by James Lucas, is screening in select theaters in the United Kingdom through at least June 30. It is widely available to stream elsewhere in the world, with a United States theatrical release to come. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cond\u00e9 Nast kills another flock of print mags. The Venice Biennale is a bust. Jeff Bezos reigns over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-684318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}