An alternate view of photographer Arbus

Director Steven Shainberg isn’t a fan of the typical movie biopic because he finds them boring.

“They tend to tell you things you already know,� says Shainberg, who directed the 2002 indie hit “Secretary.� “You are not discovering anything while you watch the movie. You are just having things you already know reiterated. That as an artistic enterprise is not appealing to me.�

So with his new film, “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus,� which opens Friday, he and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson attempted to create an inner portrait of the famed photographer rather than an external one.

Nicole Kidman stars as Arbus, who between 1958 and 1971 received acclaim for her stark black-and-white photographs of people at the fringe of society.

The movie, inspired by Patricia Bosworth’s biography, creates almost a fairy-tale scenario as to why Arbus, a New York housewife and mother of two who worked as a stylist for her photographer-husband Allan Arbus, was compelled to shoot these portraits.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Lionel, her soulful new neighbor who suffers from hypertrichosis, a rare disease that causes people to grow fur-like hair all over their body. It’s Lionel who takes Arbus under his wing and introduces her to the odd and offbeat.

“There was no real Lionel in her life, but you could say that she knew many people like Lionel,� Shainberg says. “Not necessarily hairy but all kinds of people. If Lionel had existed, she would have been the first person knocking at his door.�

As their friendship develops into love, “Fur� takes on a “Beauty and the Beast� aura.

“In part, the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ notion came out of Arbus’ life,� Shainberg says. “She was in some way Beauty going out in the world to find the Beast. She said she felt like she was living in a fairy tale for adults. She saw her own experience of going out in the world and taking pictures as an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ experience.�

Shainberg adds that Arbus’ pictures have their own fairy-tale quality. “The real people you see in her pictures seem to have sprung from her unconscious,� he says.

*

-- Susan King