Retirement seems to have treated Steven Soderbergh well well; Since he succeeded in his withdrawal from the production of films in 2012 – which led to a four -year interruption – he made at least one film a year since 2017. His return, however, saw a fairly different production, even for a director who was released as a quick talent, investigating gender after gender but which has never been completely installed on one or the other. God knows what has happened in these missing years, but, with the exception of Magic Mike’s latest danceSoderbergh 2.0 seems to be heading in a much more personal and decisive direction – there is apparently no crossing that takes us here on his “return” (Casse film of 2017 Logan Lucky) to now. Or even his latest film a few months ago, the spy thriller Black bagWhich is only similar to the extent that it takes place entirely in London.
On the surface, The Christophers seems to be another turning film, although much more ambiguous than its Ocean Trilogy and also much smaller, with a cast of only four main players in a very idealized but never unrecognizable London. In this regard, this could be a tribute to the early production of the hero of Soderbergh Richard Lester, who planned – and perhaps even invented – the years of “Swing London Notting hill. (Fortunately, this film is not Do this.)
The robbery here, however, is far from simple jobs in previous and more famous genre films by Soderbergh. It starts with the artist and specialist in catering Lori (Michaela Cole) approached by an old college friend and his brother with a very specific work. Their bohemian father, Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen), is a famous artist, apparently at the door of death, and his best years are long behind him. However, he still has an unfinished series of portraits for which the world of art claims: the Christophers, as they are known.
Knowing the summary history of Lori as an artistic forger, the adult children of Sklar Sallie and Barnaby (Jessica Gunning and James Corden) offer him a proposal: if they hire him as assistant of the old man and will give him access to works of art, will she end them in her style? Lori is reluctant to the idea but is tempted by money. “We know why you hate him,” explains Barnaby, and the brothers and sisters present the project as “a chance to take revenge”. (This exchange is a bit oriented, because, as we will discover later, Lori’s opinion on Sklar is a very complex thing.) But Lori takes work anyway, for reasons that we do not question but never quite, and yes, after a very bad start, the strange, fairly predictable couple starting to sparkle. When Lori admits everything, and Sklar, impressed by his franchise, returns to the plan, which he fully intends to sabotage. With Lori’s blessing.
From there, it becomes a little uneven, even if Ed Solomon’s scenario strives to also serve the forces of the two actors. McKellen is simply perfect as a pioneering art star of the 60s and 70s who shocked society, and his wife and children, when he came out gay (“I was in a return troop while he was simply called infidelity,” he said sadly). And Michael Coel should be perfect too; THE I can destroy you Star just has the right attitude and good delivery to compensate for the wider comedy of the play. In one way or another, we do not enter into Lori’s head in the same way as we make Julian, especially in the poignant scenes in which he reveals the true sense of Christopher’s paintings and why he never finished them.
Maybe because it is a Soderbergh film, we expect a kind of twist, but the torsion here is that there is not really torsion. Perhaps because he leads a very second life as an artist, Soderbergh seems really more interested in the questions that history raises about art; The principal being as follows: if an artist participates in his own counterfeit, is this a counterfeit? The secondary questions to which they approach concern the personality of art; Is it fair to reject the works of art with the artist once they fell from grace, and, quite the opposite, should we tolerate a terrible work of a clover artist? Sklar is an interesting character, an tip of the tip that now limits the alt-roof, certainly inappropriate and prohibited from its local art supplies for reasons that we will not know or understand. Lori, however, remains an enigma until the end.
Nevertheless, it is an unusually emotional film to soderbergh, and that is what lasts; Sklar and Lori are two very Different individuals gathered by a mutual and passionate interest in the same thing, a link that even transcends Sklar’s relationship with his own offspring, to their great horror (“The Buzzard” and “The Hyena” which he calls them). That said, it will also affect anyone who is not So much in love with the falsery of the art world, especially when Sklar considers the worst art of the world to be “dogs playing poker – and all warhol”. It is a delicate subject for sure, and that it works at all in McKellen, always a game and here being valiantly leaning in its mortality at the age of 86 years. As we know about his performance in desire Da Vinci CodeHe is an actor who gives all his time, no chain attached. It may be a bit opaque in his mailbox, but The Christophers is a film worthy of this confidence.
Title: The Christophers
Festival: Toronto (special presentations)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenwriter: Ed Solomon
Casting: Michaela Coel, Ian McKellen, Jessica Gunning, James Corden
Sales agent: CAA
Operating time: 1 h 47 minutes
