(Credits: Far Out / Magnolia Pictures)

Dalíland, a portrait of the later years of artist Salvador Dalí, opens on a strangely appropriate scene: Dalí’s 1954 appearance on the television game show What’s My Line? in which a panel of celebrities try to guess the identity of an unseen person by asking questions. Dalí gives typically strange and cryptic answers until an inspired guess reveals the truth: he is asked if he has a distinctive moustache. The scene sums up Dalí’s status at that point in his life, with much of his serious artistic output behind him, and recognised mostly for his deliberate eccentricity and his iconic moustache.

Director Mary Harron, known for American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol, and television series Six Feet Under and Alias Grace, is adept at dealing with distinctive personalities, and in this film takes on the darker and sadder aspects of the godfather of eccentrics. The script, which aims at being more belated exposé than a biography, is the weak link in Dalíland. The film is largely carried by its impressive lead actors, Ben Kingsley as the declining but still determinedly outrageous artist, and Barbara Sukowa as his wife, the intractable Gala, who often dominates scenes much as Gala is reputed to have dominated Dalí and his career.

The main body of the film is set in 1973. The primary storyline is framed around a young art gallery assistant, James Linton (Christopher Briney), who is assigned to assist Salvador Dalí in preparing for his upcoming show. He arrives to find Dalí holding court, elaborately dressed and making bizarre pronouncements about sex and death to his entourage, which includes a random assortment of attractive or unusual people, ranging from socialites and fashion models to Alice Cooper (Mark McKenna).

James soon encounters the less exotic but far more formidable figure of Dalí’s wife, Gala, the person who, he had been warned in advance, held all the power, both in the relationship and in the lucrative enterprise that Dalí’s art had produced. The film follows James as he tries to find his footing in this strange and chaotic environment and provide the necessary help to the elderly, physically failing artist without being prevented by the determined Gala or by a myriad of distractions.

Even in the early days of his career, Salvador Dalí was known not only for his considerable artistic talent and unique painting style but for his flamboyant public persona. From the time he, as a young artist in the 1920s, discovered surrealism, he was devoted to the movement’s philosophy and the group of artists who followed it, calling the surrealist circle “a kind of nourishing placenta�� for his developing abilities. He soon became one of the best-known representatives of surrealism, his artistic talent supplemented by provocative statements and shameless grandstanding, which captured the public’s attention.

The film provides glimpses of this period through wistful flashbacks featuring Ezra Miller as the young Dalí. His life took a turn, both personal and professional, in 1929 when he met and married Russian emigrée Helena Diakonoff Devulina, better known as Gala. She became not only Dalí’s muse but his business manager, negotiator, publicist, and, it is alleged, ruthless taskmaster when his output waned. While Dalí’s fame and wealth continued to increase in the years that followed their marriage, by some accounts, Gala’s guidance also made him less of a respected artist and more of a curiosity.

Dalíland gradually reveals details, almost tabloid-fashion, about Dalí’s life and work, including his involvement in a deceptive form of legal forgery and the physical limitations that reduced Dalí’s later art shows to collections of peculiar trinkets rather than actual paintings. The focus is less on Dalí’s artwork and much more on the personal, particularly his exotic soirees, the couple’s famously open marriage, Dalí’s voyeurism, and Gala’s practice of paying a series of handsome young men to act as a combination lover, escort, and protégé. In the 1970s, Gala’s favourite companion was Jeff Fenholt (Zachary Nachbar-Seckel), the star of the original Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar, an oddity which fits perfectly with their lives, including Dalí’s fascination with religious imagery.

In contrast to the bohemian mood of Dalí’s crowded salons and the open-minded 1970s setting, the script seems to take a more conventional view and invite the audience to find the elderly couple shocking. This is particularly true of Gala, who is portrayed as dangerously self-serving – not an unusual attitude among Dalí’s biographers, who tend to regard her with hostility and disgust. In a cautionary statement from his employer, Gala is vividly described to James Linton as having “the libido of an electric eel”, a phrase that was most likely drawn from a 1998 article by a man who was vice president of Dalí’s art dealer in the 1970s, who also refers to Gala as a “virago”, and “ancient harridan”. He accuses Gala of “destroying Dalí’s career” and claims that she, along with Dalí’s unscrupulous camp followers, “reduced him to a mere logo”.

This attitude, shared with Dalí’s biographer Ian Gibson, runs through the entire film and colours the performances. While the slightly parasitic qualities of Dalí’s entourage and of certain art dealers are acknowledged, the real fascination is with the main characters’ marriage. Barbara Sukowa’s Gala does not allow much ambiguity. Despite Dalí’s longstanding and publicly proclaimed devotion to his wife, which extended to include her name in the signature on some of his paintings, she is portrayed as primarily an exploitive bully and assigned the guilt for most of the difficulties in Dalí’s career.

Accordingly, Kingsley is required to portray Dalí as not merely in decline but as a victim. Kingsley manages this well, contrasting the artist’s confident public spectacle with a pathetically cowed and dominated man in his private life. By the same token, Gala’s promiscuity is shown as not merely indecent or inappropriate for her age but almost frightening, while Dalí’s habitual voyeuristic spying on his glamorous guests comes across as merely quirky and pitiful. The approach gives shape to what might otherwise be an extended celebrity gossip display by providing a plausible villain and a clear, if oversimplified, conflict. Still, an impressive cast, good direction, and eye-catching set design don’t quite make up for a superficial script. Fans of Salvador Dalí’s art will find a few surprises in the film but not a great deal of insight.