Review: In ‘A Complete Unknown,’ a cryptic Bob Dylan comes into view, gifted and callous

Folk music is something that’s mainly overheard in the elegant first stretch of the often lovely “A Complete Unknown” — it’s something happening the next room over, down the hallway, in a different club farther along the way, past the crazy tambourine man. Then again, their hero won’t get a fairer shake than in “A Complete Unknown,” which presents the tunes vividly while keeping things neatly chronological among the four or so years that any biopic interested in Dylan’s artistic arrival would have to cover, from his penniless 1961 arrival in New York through his 1965 rebellion at the Newport Folk Festival. Elle Fanning and Timothée Chalamet in the movie “A Complete Unknown.” Dylan’s women suffer mightily; they’re the heart of the film. Elle Fanning, already one of the most exquisite sufferers in American movies, steals the film with her version of Suze Rotolo, here renamed Sylvie, Dylan’s girlfriend from the time.