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The painting’s rich detail and foursquare frontality all but command attention.

As the intercontinental action shifts from Barcelona and Dublin to various American venues, Soderbergh pays as much attention to the murmured verbal manipulations and deceptions as to the mortal physical threats that result, and he films the scenes of violence with a similarly clear-eyed and confrontational frontality, as if to emphasize with a quasi-documentary element of wonder Carano’s extraordinary physical eloquence.

Thanks to the compositional scheme, as well as to light, textured brushwork that doesn’t seem to interfere with zoological accuracy, his surfaces often have the complexity and frontality of tapestries.

I miss the unequivocal frontality of the earlier paintings, with their blustering walls of words.

Bazille obviously found the negotiation of depth and frontality taxing, rendering three-dimensional forms in minimally shaded passages of bold color.