James Lucas's 'Moss & Freud' Biopic Fails to Capture Kate Moss's Complexity

Philippa Snow reviews James Lucas's 2025 film 'Moss & Freud', which fictionalizes the creation of Lucian Freud's 2002 painting 'Naked Portrait' of Kate Moss. The film stars Ellie Bamber as Moss and Derek Jacobi as Freud. Snow argues the biopic reduces Moss to a frivolous, traumatized hedonist, ignoring her savvy business acumen and multifaceted persona. The film opens with Moss at her peak hedonism, then shows her transformation under Freud's influence into a mother and woman of substance, culminating in 2002 with a brief 2011 coda. Snow criticizes the omission of key events like Moss's 2005 cocaine scandal and her subsequent career rebound, including eighteen contracts for Autumn-Winter 2006 and her 2022 role as Creative Director of Diet Coke. The film includes black-and-white flashbacks to Moss's traumatic teen shoots: the 'Summer of Love' editorial for The Face (where Corine Day convinced her to remove her top) and a Calvin Klein ad with Mark Wahlberg (where she reports being groped). Snow compares the film to 2024's 'Back to Black', which similarly sanitized Amy Winehouse. Moss served as an Executive Producer on the film. A Tate Britain exhibition 'The 90s: Art and Fashion' opening October 2025 will feature Moss as its poster girl. Snow concludes that the 'real' Kate Moss remains subjective, and the film fails to capture her enigmatic appeal.