The Artist’s Room Is Not a Neutral Space

At the BFI, Ruby has barely finished showing her film before the tax is levied: which parts are real? The interviewer wants origins, autobiography, the little certificate of suffering audiences sometimes seem to require before they trust invention. Ruby thinks of Hitchcock putting a light inside Cary Grant’s glass of milk so that it glows.

She says, too, “I invent things.” A perfectly good answer. The ritual is familiar enough to seem harmless. At readings, Q&As, profiles, and festival interviews, the question recurs: where the story came from, which character is secretly the maker, what was lived, what was borrowed, what was survived.

Often this passes for intimacy. Sometimes it is intimacy. But the question has other manners too.

It asks the artist to open the suitcase. Tell us what you paid for this. A made thing is admired, then frisked for biography.

Imogen Crimp’s Give Me Everything You’ve Got takes that small public shakedown and builds a house around it. Ruby, a young filmmaker, is invited to the country home of Ellen, the celebrated feminist director she idolizes. Ellen offers what every young artist knows how to desire before knowing whether it is safe to want: attention, proximity, a desk, a view, a room in which to become serious.

The danger begins before mentorship has separated itself from help. Ruby’s longing for Ellen is embarrassing because it is so legible. Ellen is not merely successful; she is formative.