Here is an amazing fairy story from modern Manhattan, a version of beauty and the beast (but which is which?). Diane Arbus is married and the mother of two. She helps her husband’s photography business and the family fur company. And she is a nervous wreck—because she isn’t expressing herself. Then a stranger moves into the upstairs apartment—call him Lionel, and step carefully. He is rare and alarming, but he is a tender soul who will introduce Diane to the lives of the other-than-ordinary. He will give us the Arbus we know. This is an astonishingly bold fable by Steven Shainberg (SECRETARY) that relies to a great extent on the courage, the beauty and the sheer adventurousness of its two central players: Robert Downey Jr. as Lionel and Nicole Kidman going for broke again and suggesting that it’s about time someone wrote a book about her. –DT