Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith) wants to be an artist of the first rank, and in 1970s New York he builds that ambition out of a camera, a downtown scene, and a tangle of lovers and patrons, among them Patti Smith (Marianne Rendón) and the collector Sam Wagstaff (John Benjamin Hickey). Ondi Timoner follows him from his first pictures to the height of his fame. By 1989 he is dying, with the work he has made and the work he still means to make both at stake.