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Jerome and Audrey (Sophia Myles) hit it off

Meanwhile, there's a serial killer on the loose, though this plot element receives very little attention until a point somewhere in the film's second half, when we witness a woman being stalked and strangled from the killer's point of view. (Classical music plays over the soundtrack once more, and as the woman slumps to her death, we see a "missing kitten" sign on the message board behind her.) The police investigating this crime are so eager to nab the guy that they have taken to arresting art-student poseurs who make anti-police statements in their paintings, and both sides look pretty stupid in the end.

Zwigoff is on firm, if shallow, ground when he mocks the art world and the caricatures who inhabit it. He seems less certain what to do with the serial-killer part of the story once it finally raises its head and becomes an integral part of the drama. The few characters we might have cared for become increasingly shallow themselves and prone to making stupid decisions (a suicide attempt here, a narcissistic pretense of love there), and it all lapses into clichés about the relationship between art and infamy, between personal integrity and selling your soul, and so on—though the final shot is a potent image of mutually selfish sentiment as a substitute for other-centered soulfulness. It is as though Zwigoff simply threw this movie together just to "question aesthetic experience." And if so, I don't buy that.

1. Why do people make art? Do any of these characters make art as a reason for anything other than self-gratification? Do you think the filmmakers are aware of any other possible reason for making art? Why do you think they made this film?
   
   
2. Does anyone in this movie do anything selfless for anyone else? What do you make of the relationship between Jerome and Audrey at the end of this film? To what extent do you think he is really relating to her, or only to a figment of his imagination?
   
   
3. What about Jonah? Are his actions essentially selfless, or selfish? Does the art school affect him in some way? Is his relationship with Audrey justified in any way?
   
   
4. Marvin says he's proud to be an "a--hole" because that is his "true nature" and art is all about "truth and freedom"-and this, he says, is "beautiful." Are truth and freedom always beautiful? Is Marvin really being true or free by indulging his arrogance like this?
   
   
5. What does the film say about the relationship between art and society? Is there any danger in the anti-police statements made by the students? In Jimmy's rants against society? In the way some students hope to capitalize on the serial killer's exploits? Should art be dangerous? Should it be safe?
   
   

Art School Confidential is rated R for language including sexual references, nudity and a scene of violence seen from the strangler's point of view. Four-letter words and crude, graphic references to sexual activity are plentiful, and there are about half-a-dozen irreverent uses of "Jesus." The nudity includes full male nudity and partial female nudity, all of which is limited to the art class, though the male model does come on to one of the students.

Photos © Copyright Sony Pictures Classics

© Peter T. Chattaway 2006, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

An indie filmmaker lampooning the pretensions of the art world—oh, how droll! Terry Zwigoff first made his mark with the critically acclaimed Ghost World, and now he's back to dark, dry, and ironic humor—mostly at the expense of art school enrollees—in Art School Confidential. Part black comedy and part murder mystery, the film is in fact so confidential that most Christian critics opted not to see it—though, as this limited-release indie film opens in more and more cities, that may very well change.

Mainstream critics mostly think Confidential should stay under wraps.

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