Entertainment

GAY ROMP IS DALI FOLLY

HELLO, Dali! “Twi light” hunk Robert Pattinson goes over to the other team — at least for a while — as the eccentric Spanish artist in “Little Ashes,” an exceedingly silly historical fantasy.

The giggles start with the 18-year-old Salvador Dali’s 1922 arrival in a frilly pirate shirt and long hair at a conservative Madrid university where the other students are wearing short hair and suits.

Dali quickly catches the eye of the barely closeted playwright-poet Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran).

Their flirtations are frowned upon by their roommate, filmmaker Luis Bunuel (Matthew McNulty), whose homophobia might mask a repressed yearning of his own.

After much eyelash fluttering, Dali and Lorca finally hook up while skinny-dipping on vacation in Cadaques.

The sex scenes are pretty mild and brief for a contemporary gay-themed movie — and a threesome with Lorca’s long-suffering girlfriend (Marina Gatell) is unintentionally hilarious.

It’s the film’s speculation that Dali dumped Lorca as a career move: Lorca’s sexuality and increasing political activism (“You’ve become so liberal!”) might get in the way of Dali’s ambitions to become the most famous painter of his day.

So Dali moves to Paris, takes surrealism and personal publicity to new heights, and marries the woman (Arly Jover) who became his wife of many decades.

Lorca mopes, finds a new boyfriend and campaigns against Spanish fascists with his plays.

Directed by Paul Morrison (“Solomon and Gaenor”) from a script attributed to first-timer Philippa Goslett, this is the most dubious film about an artist since “Goya’s Ghosts.”

Significantly, that bomb was also shot in stilted English in Spain to accommodate its international cast.

The new movie is filled with such howlers as Dali’s boast that “I’ll bring Paris to its knees.”

And Lorca’s whine about a Dali-Bunuel collaboration: “You know what they call this film? ‘An Andalusian Dog.’ And I’m from where, exactly?”

This is the sort of movie that reduces Paris in the 1920s and the Spanish Civil War (where Lorca was killed in 1936, while Dali lived to the ripe age of 84 and died rich in 1989) to cheesy montages.

“Little Ashes,” which takes its name from one of Dali’s paintings, mostly looks great.

The visual attractions include the frequently bare-chested Mr. Pattinson, even if Dali’s famous moustaches look like something out of a high school production on him.

Pattinson’s performance? Imagine if Prince played the lead in “Amadeus.” Luckily, Pattinson will be back in “New Moon” before the end of the year.

lou.lumenick@nypost.com

LITTLE ASHES

The pain in Spain.

Running time: 112 minutes. Rated R (sex, profanity, disturbing images). At the Paris, the Chelsea, the Sunshine.