There was a time when Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) was one of the most important voices in British art. The Christophers places his period of maximum influence as the ’90s, tying his legacy to the wave in British art that also included Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Chris Ofili, Damien Hirst and the artists featured in the Sensation exhibit — the Young British Artists being riffed on in both The Cell and the episode of Absolutely Fabulous in which Eddie’s father dies. But the work of Julian isn’t about form, but rather the emotional engine driving it; two series of portraiture (the titular Christophers) that define a relationship, from beginning to end.
The Christophers
NR, 100 minutes
Opening Friday, April 24, at the Belcourt and AMC Thoroughbred 20
And now, after Julian’s many attempts to figure out his relationship to the art world in all its shenanigans (having sidewalk sales of his work, being elusively canceled, getting involved with reality TV, making grand controversial statements to whoever will listen), the only thing that anyone seems to care about is an unfinished series of nine portraits of that same Christopher. This series is a Schrödinger’s Exhibition — the capstone on a career run aground, but also a means to relaunch said career with a dip back into the time of maximum impact.
When Julian’s two 40-something children (Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning and James Corden, naturally) show up, it’s like a WCW tag-team match of mercenary unpleasantness. They want to cash in, even to the point of hiring accomplished art forger Lori (the majestic Michaela Coel, with a coat as iconic as Demi Moore’s in The Substance) to finish these works so everyone can get paid. That said, their plans pale in unpleasantness to Art Fight, the reality show competition that found Julian playing Simon Cowell to the U.K.’s best and brightest new young artists. We get maybe 90 seconds of it, and that is enough to make you want to slap McKellen in the face for fulfilling the expectations of those who want snide stereotypes and bitchy bruisecraft.
The Demi Moore-starring body-horror film hits the Belcourt and Regal and AMC theaters this week
This is a different kind of art-heist film. It has elements of that genre, but it’s deeply rooted in the world of art forgery as well. These are very different kinds of operations, yoked together by the means and the method of how it’s all going down. This would make for a great double feature with Orson Welles’ triumphant ’70s nonfiction whatsit F for Fake, and some of the discussions that Lori and Julian have as she tries to infiltrate his studio as an assistant are among the more fascinating passages of cinema this year. This is a film that understands and loves artists’ spaces. Cluttered museums for an audience of one, these are the places we usually get to see only idealized versions of.
When it’s the Ian-and-Michaela show, there’s nothing that even comes close. It’s like a fencing match in which the foils have been replaced by those cinematic samurai swords that have been hammered to the thickness of an atom, capable of cleaving through near anything.
It’s just a damn shame that, as publicity for this film was ramping up, director/cinematographer/editor Steven Soderbergh decided to make a big to-do about experimenting with AI for his next two films. It’s entirely possible that this is meant as some grand conflagration about artistic creation — and honestly, I could see him hemming to the line like a Cenobite in the first two Hellraiser films (in which there is extensive debate over whether it is hands or desire that determine the authorship of an event). But it’s also exhausting and deeply disheartening that a director who has been positively freewheeling about finding new ways to be creative would make such an enervating choice. Or maybe he’s using this AI pivot to bring the conflict between Julian and Lori in The Christophers off the big screen and into the real world? I hope that it’s that kind of a grand concept, because otherwise it is just very disappointing, especially for a film this brisk and thoughtful.
