There’s something playful, or willfully perverse, about casting one of the world’s most spectacularly photogenic actresses in the role of a photographer — essentially recasting the object as subject even as the movie camera lingers on her good looks. Here’s FUR: an imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus, as much a spiritual sequel to Secretary as an Alice in Wonderland twist on Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. Here’s a dodgy biopic from filmmakers who worked up the gumption to take on the Diane Arbus story in order to explore a peculiar fascination with all the things that are suggested by the Arbus biography: a fascination with outsiders; a seething, well-hidden dissatisfaction with the role of a housewife in 1950s New York; and an indulgent, searching sensuality hidden just below those primly belted housewife dresses.

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