Maybe Steven Soderbergh needs to direct fewer films. (To say nothing of his work as producer.) For well over a decade his projects (even the more obviously commercial ones) have been reasonably well-received critically, sometimes commercially, too, but forgotten so fast, it’s as if they never existed. So too here on this well acted, but empty whimsy on failing artistic powers, greedy children, a truth-telling assistant and the difference between what art costs and what it’s worth. Not strictly a two-hander, though it feels like one; a throwback to faux-stylish death-haunted ‘70s play adaptations like SLEUTH or DEATHTRAP. Ian McKellen plays the fast-fading chattering bore of a painter whose estranged children (Tweedledum Jessica Gunning and Tweedledee James Corden) hope to cash in post-mortem on a late work, THE CHRISTOPHERS, a series of unfinished portrait studies on his last great love. Lucky for them, talented but undiscovered painter Michaela Coel needs a job and hits it off in an antagonistic way, to get hired by McKellen as his assistant. Her secret assignment: finish The Christophers after his imminent death using his paint & brushes to hide the forgery, then split the sales with the siblings. Has no one told these dopes that unfinished ‘lost’ work can fetch prices equal to if not higher than finished second-rate stuff? In any event something of a real relationship develops between the painters scuttling the plot . . . but in a good way. A fun watch, if you have the patience. Some of the heavily improvised dialogue does go on (McKellen not one the great Shakespearean monologists for nothing!), but the teasing will he or won’t he destroy his unfinished work before he kicks the bucket, holds less interest and puts out less tension than Soderbergh counts on. So this time, the film was forgotten before it hit the screen.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: For something in the same ballpark: aging gay writers/artists confronting their demons, try LOVE IS THE DEVIL/’98 or QUEER/ 24. Each with Daniel Craig, but going from object to subject. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/queer-2024.html
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