by Julian Wood
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Alex Lutz, Lea Drucker, Arcadi Radeff, Louise Chevillotte, Nora Hamzawi
Intro:
... an everyday story of art dealing folk ...
Who doesn’t love a good heist movie? And if the theft is set in an interesting world, then so much the better. This one has some of these elements but fails to fully take off. Part of the problem is that there are not a lot of characters that one would really esteem or like.
We start with Andre Masson (Alex Lutz). He is a dandified art expert and successful wheeler-dealer. We surmise this because he dresses in expensive clothes and drives an Aston Martin (even more of a statement in France than England perhaps). He has a complicated domestic life, but he breezes through the world born aloft by self-confidence and good connections.
The inciting incident occurs when he hears of a rare painting turning up in the family home of an ordinary household in North-Eastern France. There is money to be made, as the family does not know its true value. It is by Egon Schiele and not many of the paintings of this deliciously decadent artist ever show up, as Andre is well aware. At first, he is disinclined to believe that it could be an original, but he is persuaded by a younger worker that they should drive to the town of Mulhouse to see for themselves.
Schiele is very collectable. Almost all of his work has been recovered and is found in private collections or museums. Schiele was of course Jewish and so we learn that the painting was seized by the nazis during the war. As is well known, some nazis were not above secreting away the so-called degenerate art that was scheduled for the bonfire, and some of this murky past hangs over this painting’s preservation. The family that has it on their wall has a young middle-aged factory worker called Martin (Arcadi Radeff). He is remarkably uninterested in the art dealer talk and the intrigue that surrounds the work. In refusing their money-obsessed values, he becomes the moral centre of this story.
It is not fair to hold a film to account for something that it does not purport to be, but as noted, this feels like it should have had more of an art heist element. It is there, but not in a way that really adds any tension. The other title of the film is ‘Auction’, which has less come-on factor, but more accurately reflects the film’s focus. What we are left with is an everyday story of art dealing folk, who are unsympathetic. Nor do we get much insight into Schiele or the power of his art as all the auctioneer types are only interested in the auction house’s cut. In this case, a little bit of spill-over goodness flows to the rural family, which is some sort of justification perhaps.
