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The aging painter Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) of Steven Soderbergh\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>The Christophers<\/i> is introduced recording cameos, donning a\u00a0beret for the occasion and signing off each time by drawing his autograph in the air, as if signing a\u00a0painting, a\u00a0flourish that costs each Cameo customer an extra hundred quid. A\u00a0work of art is worth more when signed by a\u00a0famous artist, even if the signature is invisible\u2009\u2014\u2009an apt throwaway joke in a\u00a0film concerned with a\u00a0plot to forge eight of Sklar\u2019s unfinished canvases, down to the authenticating signature in the bottom corner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Such satisfying thematic assonances are typical of Ed Solomon\u2019s screenplay, which Soderbergh filmed in London earlier this year, around the time of the release of the London-shot\u00a0<\/span>Black Bag<\/i>, with a\u00a0crackerjack script by old pro and new Soderbergh go-to David Koepp.\u00a0<\/span>Black Bag<\/i> was Soderbergh and Koepp\u2019s third collaboration since the pandemic, as\u00a0<\/span>The Christophers<\/i> is Soderbergh and Solomon\u2019s third, following\u00a0<\/span>No Sudden Move\u00a0<\/i>and the miniseries\u00a0<\/span>Full Circle<\/i>. The growing implication is that there are plenty of proficiently constructed screenplays out there, full of snappy dialogue, rhyming subplots, and airtight plotting, turnkey properties ready to be turned into mid-budget entertainments for mainstream adult audiences, and Soderbergh is willing to direct them all, if necessary, if no one else\u00a0will.<\/span><\/p>\n Sklar is the fallen idol of Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), a\u00a0former painter, sometime art restorer and struggling gig worker introduced sketching at the Tower of London, then jumping back into a\u00a0food truck to serve a\u00a0waiting tourist. (Such efficient exposition, which introduces the character and establishes her motivation in two shots, is the kind of problem-solving that absorbs Soderbergh.) He was once a\u00a0swaggering Lucian Freud type, flipping off the establishment and belatedly running afoul of cancel culture. Bisexual before it was fashionable (his phrasing), he was eventually reduced to the role of cruel and catty Simon Cowell type on a\u00a0competition called\u00a0<\/span>Art Fight<\/i>, but before that, around the time he came out, he produced his last significant work, a\u00a0series of intense and sensual portraits of a\u00a0male muse. Known as \u200b\u201c<\/span>The Christophers\u201d, the paintings sell for millions at auctions to the new art-world commodity traders in Russia, China, and the crypto world, and Lori is enlisted by Sklar\u2019s bickering failkids played by Jessica Gunning and a\u00a0nicely entitled James Corden, to gin up one last windfall. (There used to be nine unfinished Christophers in Sklar\u2019s attic, but their own attempts to finish it in their father\u2019s style came out like\u00a0Cecilia Gim\u00e9nez\u2019s \u200b\u201c<\/span>Ecce Homo\u201d). After all, they remind Lori, studio assistants such as herself make uncredited contributions to their masters\u2019 work all the\u00a0time.<\/span><\/p>\n What follows is something like a\u00a0Soderbergh heist film, in which the game is implant rather than extract the loot, but similarly concerned with deception, shifting alliances, and psychological cat-and-mouse as information is revealed and concealed and McGuffins change hands. Much of the movie is a\u00a0two-hander contained within Sklar\u2019s conjoined townhouses, where Coel and McKellen challenge each other from across the generation gap on the nature of creativity, skimming along the surface of debates about mentors and proteges, authorship and influence, creators and audiences, as intelligible and intellectually stimulating as a\u00a0well-made play.<\/span><\/p>\n McKellen makes a\u00a0feast of a\u00a0verbose and expansive part, holding forth with a\u00a0Lear bass rumble catching on wet lungs. Sklar wears scarves, chore coats and designer sweaters, a\u00a0hip wardrobe (I think some pieces came from Toast) undercut slightly by the telltale track pants on the bottom half\u2009\u2014\u2009no belts to fasten. (Some days he prefers a\u00a0dressing gown, unbelted; when Lori objects, he grouses that \u200b\u201c<\/span>Weinstein ruined the robe for the rest of us.\u201d) His requests for aide imply more wounded pride than solicitousness\u2009\u2014\u2009he imperiously informs Lori, as if stating an objective fact, that it\u2019s been recommended he not carry anything heavy. As Sklar probes suggestively at Lori\u2019s personal life, dismisses the hackwork of his lesser rivals and the vapidity of the art market, and fulminates about past and present betrayals, frantically blowing hot air at the dying embers of his creativity, the grand old thesp projects the blowsy vainglory of an aging bohemian, as if\u00a0<\/span>Sunset Blvd.\u00a0<\/i>had been transposed to\u00a0Soho.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n