The Christophers

April 27 – 30

Monday 7 pm
Tuesday 7 pm
Wednesday 3:30 pm
Thursday 1:30 & 7 pm

Comedy / Drama
Rating: PG – 1hr 39min

Steven Soderbergh’s latest feature, The Christophers, is about a master painter who is dying without having completed a legendary series of unfinished portraits, and the young artist hired by the painter’s children to “complete” the works so they can be auctioned for millions of dollars. Ian McKellen is stunningly good as the older painter, Julian Sklar, a 1960s Swingin’ London sensation who has aged into a decrepit caricature of himself. He rarely leaves his London home, which is actually two side-by-side townhouses: one a domicile, the other a studio. He’s now known mainly for his paid appearances on a Cameo-like platform and his stint as a judge on Art Fight, a competition show where professionals judge amateurs. It’s rare to see a film that treats art with intelligence and rarer still to view one that has a sense of humour. That The Christophers does both and manages to feature two brilliant performances, in deliberately contrasting ways, by Ian McKellen and Michaela Cohl, makes it a sophisticated delight.

The majority of the film concentrates on McKellen’s Julian Sklar, an aging enfant terrible of the British art world and Michaela Cohl as Lori Butler, a brilliant young painter and writer who has been reduced to selling fast food on the streets. McKellen is all talk, slouching around his massive homes—with its two entrances used to cannily confound approaching guests—wearing shabby bohemian clothes marked off, when necessary, by a trademark beret. Cohl uses her silent stare and astonishing angular beauty as weapons to ward off McKellen’s charmingly excessive manner. The duel between McKellen and Cohl is a marvelous two-hander; one could imagine their interactions as playing immensely well on stage. Lori’s mission is to find several of Julian’s unfinished paintings — all portraits of his former lover Christopher — and finish them in Julian’s style. The plan is that when Julian dies, perhaps someday soon, the forged Christophers will be discovered and sold for millions. Lori will get a third of the proceeds.

Soderbergh has a deft way with heist and home-invasion movies, and The Christophers is, as you’d expect, full of twists and reversals. Lori has some moral qualms about taking on a forgery job, but she also has a personal gripe to settle with Julian that leads her to say yes. Also, she needs the money; as ever, Soderbergh is keenly attuned to his characters’ economic straits. McKellen has a sublime ability to combine gravitas with mischief, and he gives his strongest performance in years as this incorrigible old soul. I was reminded of his great Oscar-nominated turn in Gods and Monsters, as the Hollywood director James Whale, another queer artist in the twilight of a legendary career. But McKellen is matched, nuance for nuance, by Coel, an intensely magnetic screen presence whose work here is mesmerizing in its poise and restraint.

The Christophers raises all kinds of interesting questions, but it’s not without answers, including one that might humbly be called the meaning of life: “to last in the minds of others.” But that’s not the whole picture — for an artist, at least — this eloquent movie reveals. Not being forgotten is one thing; what matters more is how we are remembered.