Review by Frank Plowright
Jonathan Lackman realises that despite her brief 1920s European celebrity, you’ve probably never heard of Maria Lani, so he has one hell of story to tell. Those most likely to know the name at all are via polymath artist Jean Cocteau, yet even his version of events isn’t the entire truth.
Lani’s brief brush with fame came when she associated with the avant garde of 1920s Paris. She claimed to be a German silent film star, and so bewitched assorted artists that over fifty of them produced a portrait of her.
Despite a fascinating story, an interesting subject and the artistic celebrities of an era, The Woman With Fifty Faces fails to come to life, with a lack of focus the primary culprit. While enabling the inclusion of Jewish persecution rife in Europe, devoting so many pages to Lani’s background offers little beyond social deprivation. Bare facts are presented with little insight into Lani herself other than the speculative sample page. She only begins to come to life a quarter of the way through when meeting future husband Max Abromowicz. Before then we also have to cope with the sparse storytelling and Lackman’s irritating quirk of spreading a single narrative sentence across an entire page or more.
Abromowicz brings life to Lani by reflecting her, and she becomes a willing accomplice to his con-man’s career, and The Woman With Fifty Faces starts to take shape.
A clever artistic conceit is Lani’s full face never being fully revealed except in the drawings of artists. It’s in keeping with Zachary J. Pinson’s offbeat approach. His characters are glorious exaggerations, each given a distinct visual identity, prime among them his lumpy Abramowicz, and there’s no respecting celebrity. Cocteau, generally portrayed as aloof is in the sample art seen as a gloopy wide-eyed mess. The slim Lami is the only intrusion of glamour in a sordid and grubby world that resonates.
Lami and Abromowicz bewitching Paris is the core story, as it features the greatest amount of known names. Cocteau is besotted and makes the introductions, but Lackman can’t drop the unnecessary habit of stretching sentences across the page, leaving Pinson to fill in with meaningless images. Brief sequences show what could have been, such as a taut scene set at an exhibition accompanied by public commentary, but not enough is to the point.
Time moves rapidly after that 1929 exhibition, almost straight to World War II a decade later and a chance to pull another stunt in the USA. This time European ex-pats are entranced, but tragedy intervenes. An epilogue features Abromowicz writing about his wife and Lackman discovering her story. It’s a fascinating one, but The Woman With Fifty Faces doesn’t do it justice.
