Arbus claimed that art was "a secret about a secret." This picture makes a fetish of fetishes. The kinkiest conceit leaves Arbus' curious gaze secondary to Sweeney's love-struck study of Arbus, who thinks she's the documentarian. Sweeney spills the beans about their arrangement. Lovingly observing her fascination with his crowd of fellow side-show types, he tells her: "All my life I've been waiting for a real freak."

It's not even bad. It just sits there, so quietly and slowly wallowing in cliches that many of the obvious moments don't register as cliches, but rather as the cinematic equivalent of benign neglect.