The major thing that “Mapplethorpe” has in its favor is that the film is afraid of neither the life nor the work of the notorious photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Documentary director Ondi Timoner (“We Live in Public”), making her narrative debut, has ensured that this movie acknowledges the many hard edges and unattractive qualities of this man while also celebrating and not looking away from his most explicit and scariest photographs, many of which rather surprisingly appear on screen.
Most mainstream films are afraid of showing the male penis, or anything having to do with sadomasochism, but Timoner’s attitude here seems to be, “Bring it on!” (Not to put too fine a point on it, but this film is basically wall-to-wall male genitalia, both on actors in the narrative sections and in the photos themselves.)