THE CHRISTOPHERS Review: Art Forgery Comedy-Drama Excels On Every Level

With a filmmaking career spanning two centuries, five decades, and an Academy Award for Best Directing to his name, Steven Soderbergh (Black Bag, Presence, Magic Mike's Last Dance) remains oddly underappreciated, often overlooked, and, in some critical circles, dismissed as a second-tier filmmaker, a talented, genre-hopping journeyman.

 

He’s had far more unqualified hits than misfires or misses, including several that can be reasonably described as genre standouts (Out of Sight, the Ocean’s trilogy) or outright masterpieces (Traffic, The Limey, Sex, Lies, and Videotape).

 

Working from a screenplay penned by frequent collaborator Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move, Bill & Ted Face the Music, Now You See Me), Soderbergh’s latest film, The Christophers, a comedy-drama set on the outer edge of the contemporary art world, unquestionably belongs in the conversation regarding Soderbergh’s best post-retirement oeuvre. Soderbergh unsurprisingly delivers his usually crisply shot, edited, unobtrusive direction.

 

Solomon’s script gives the characters deftly funny, insightful dialogue, much of it delivered by Ian McKellen in joyfully cantankerous mode as a faded, past-his-prime painter, Julian Sklar. His co-lead is Michaela Coel, who portrays Lori Butler, an art restorer/forger; both deliver splendidly assured, irresistibly watchable performances.

 

The “Christophers” of the title refer to a set of eight -- formerly nine -- paintings left unfinished by the elder Sklar. His varicious adult children, Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning), hope to "rediscover" the paintings, now finished by Lori, by hiding them in the attic until after Sklar's death, and then selling them at auction, hopefully for millions. They see the paintings both as their birthright and as compensation for a lifetime of neglect and emotional damage wittingly or unwittingly committed by the elder Sklar on his children. 

 

Desperately lonely and all but waiting for his imminent demise from natural causes, Sklar uses his caustic, cutting wit, unquenchable verbosity, and entitled, self-centered musings as an all-purpose defense mechanism. Lori enters Sklar’s three-story duplex as his latest, possibly last, assistant. At least initially, however, Sklar expresses little interest in Lori as an individual whose background, experiences, or thoughts matter, let alone as a fellow artist. 

 

Lori is less an assistant than an underpaid therapist for Sklar’s frustrations with an unjust world that relegated him first as an ex-artist, later as a Gordon Ramsay-inspired critic on a once-popular art competition program, and finally as a footnote to a long-gone, all-but-forgotten art movement. Sklar has little love for his children, both of whom he harshly rejects as abject failures (in part reflecting badly on himself), and lingering, semi-acknowledged affection for his one-time muse, the “Christopher” who appeared in three sequential series, the last left uncompleted when Christopher, presumably asserting his autonomy and agency, left Sklar as the latter’s lover and muse. 

 

Decades later, the apparent victim of “cancel culture,” Sklar lives in self-exile, keeping himself financially afloat through Cameo-style videos for his dwindling fanbase. Lori, wary at first, is often forced into an incredibly lopsided conversation: Sklar talks without interruption, Lori listens attentively. As Lori slowly ingratiates herself into Sklar’s good graces, the art-forgery element introduced in the opening scene begins to assert itself, but neither Soderbergh nor Solomon is interested in postponing its resolution — or rather, revelation — until the final moments. 

 

Far from the daft, addled octogenarian he seems to be at first, Sklar’s ability to read people and their not-so-hidden agendas leads to an early resolution of the art forgery element and Lori’s potential betrayal -- a standard, if not quite, routine, element typical of heist/crime-dramas -- into an illuminating meditation about more than just art, commerce, and the corrosive relationship between the two. The Christophers turns into a touching exploration of age, regret, and the possibility of reconciliation, if not with family, friends, or ex-lovers, then with yourself, your flaws, your mistakes, and the unfinished work left behind for others.

 

In The Christophers’ final moments, completing Sklar's unfinished paintings transforms from a strictly mercenary transaction into an act of genuine love, of remembrance, and tribute to the creative impulse that survives well after we’ve departed this mortal plane for the next one.  

 

The Christophers opens today, only in movie theaters, via Neon.