Paint

A meandering but occasionally insightful look into the struggles of three young painters trying to make it in the New York art scene.

I don't much go in for definitions of the artist as some kind of cultural unicorn to whom the rules of polite society don't apply. They're people just like everyone else, and all this talk about their role as struggling outcasts who see things others don't and bravely hold up a mirror to the rest of us just seems like an attempt to excuse bad behavior.

"Paint" is the story of three struggling young painters trying to make it in the New York City art scene. In meanders around a bit, and just when one story thread gets interesting it tends to be set aside to pick up another. Still, it boasts some solid performances and an insider's look into the struggles between creative impulses and the business side of art.

Josh Caras plays Dan Pierson, a well-to-do kid from the suburbs who is told his art isn't "dark enough." He's got a good heart but is pretty well mired in his privilege, financially supported by his parents. His best friend is Quinn (Paul Cooper), a lanky cynic who lives in his tiny studio with no heat because he doesn't pay the rent.

Olivia Luccardi plays Kelsey, a dreamer who works in a string of dead-end menial jobs and resents the fact that another woman from their art school copped her theme of doing paintings of her own vagina, and was more successful at it.

Kelsey gets her break, such as it is, when she hooks up with an old painter who doesn't paint anymore, and he steals one of her paintings modeled after his own work and sells it by passing it off as one of his earlier pieces. She's incensed, until he points out that she can now go to art dealers and truthfully claim that she just sold a painting for $20,000.

This leads to her being connected with Conner (François Arnaud), a wealthy young art collector, though he seems more interested in Kelsey's earthly charms than her art.

Meanwhile, Dan gets an idea to do something edgy: paint sexually-tinged nude portraits of his own mother. Played by Amy Hargreaves, she refuses to pose for her son, but agrees to let someone else take photos that can be used for the paintings. This turns out to be Quinn, who seduces her, which leads to inevitable conflict with Dan.

The nude photography scene is pretty sensual, though the mother's anxiety about revealing her middle-aged body would have played better if the didn't choose an actress who looks like she lives at the gym.

For his own part, Dan is sleeping with his art school girlfriend, Stephanie (Comfort Clinton), who's married to a much older rich man. Dan asks how does she know he won't be successful eventually, and she honestly and cagily responds that she just didn't want to wait that long.

Other characters float in and out of the fray. There's Austin (Daniel Bellomy), a cool and confident classmate who's just made a big splash with his own gallery show. He has an assistant, Claire (Kaliswa Brewster), who's assigned to throw Quinn out of the show but ends up becoming his manager/agent.

Written and directed by Michael Walker, "Paint" has a lot of things going for it -- maybe too much. There are too many tertiary characters and side plots. For example, Dan has a strange interlude where he looks up a former classmate who's become a drug addict, offers to buy them heroin and then is threatened/solicited by the dealer. It's like we took a sudden left turn into "Pulp Fiction."

I liked the parts I liked about this movie, though not the sometimes slapdash way they're flung together.