Review of "Little Ashes"

An earnest gay biopic that teeters on the edge of preciousness before plunging headlong into the drink, Little Ashes does have an audience out there, I'm sure. I just know that I'm not in it, nor are most of the people who will be checking it out for its much-hyped casting of Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson as a gay-experimenting Salvador Dalí.

While with a healthier budget, tighter script and steadier directorial hand, Ashes may have been the next Brideshead Revisited or Before Night Falls, it lands more in the neighborhood of Savage Grace.

At its core, Ashes is the story of gay Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, a contemporary of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí who mined his Andalusian gypsy heritage and status as an outsider to become one of the most celebrated poets of his time.  

Javier Beltrán as Federico Garcia Lorca

As played by Spanish teen television heartthrob Javier Beltrán, this Lorca is prim, sensitive and ridiculously adorable ... and probably a bit too clingy for his own good. When we meet Lorca, he is rooming with the outspoken, dashing Buñuel (striking British actor Matthew McNulty), a bully and homophobe whose dedication to uncompromising art is rivaled only by his commitment to the people's resistance against the rising tide of fascism in Spain.

Matthew McNulty as Luis Buñuel

The less aggressive Lorca follows Buñuel's lead, remaining quiet when his boorish roommate yells "faggots!" at two men after a drunken all-nighter, and while the two clearly have affection for one another, their ambitions diverge as Buñuel wants to go to Paris to conquer the art world, while Lorca is an Andalusian at heart. And it's clear that Lorca's sexuality will eventually be an issue for him and his friend.

Cue the arrival of the foppish, mercurial, and very probably insane Salvador Dalí (Pattinson), who arrives at the men's school wearing riding boots, a frilly pirate shirt and long hair, much to the amusement of the school's Brylcreemed, impeccably-suited students.

Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dali