Film Review - The Christophers

Images courtesy of Roadshow Films.

It’d be rational to assume that a director who releases a new film every year (sometimes multiple!) can’t maintain a high standard of quality; you’ve got to slow down, or lower your standards. Steven Soderbergh refuses to do either. 

With The Christophers, now in Australian theatres, the respected American director follows up last year’s excellent espionage chamber-piece Black Bag, released only months after the experimental horror film Presence. Perhaps Soderbergh is able to remain so prolific by keeping his films tightly focused – this one is a restrained two-hander that takes place mostly in a single location. 

The two characters are vividly drawn. First we meet Lori, played by the one-of-one multihyphenate Michaela Coel, a thoroughly educated artist whose dreams are seemingly on hold. When we first see her, she’s slinging noodles in a food truck on the banks of the Thames. Lori is hired by a former art-school classmate Sallie (Jessica Gunning) and her brother Barnaby (a well-utilised James Corden – he’s never been so unlikeable) to, on paper, serve as the new assistant for their ailing father Julian Sklar, (Ian McKellen), a famous painter. Secretly, however, Lori is at his palatial London townhouse to gain access to a much-longed-for series of incomplete works Sklar painted many years ago and kept hidden – the titular Christophers, depicting his former lover – to finish them herself, an act of forgery only possible because of her estimable artistic talent. 

The evolving relationship between the successful old artist and the principled young graduate is what Soderbergh is interested in. Where Sklar is the product of decades of having his talent and importance validated – blustery, ranting, and histrionic – Lori is the picture of calm; like one of those journalists who skewer their interview subjects by letting them ramble on unfiltered and say something damning or cancellable. Coel’s distinctive features play so well in a frozen mask of bemusement – McKellen’s Sklar might drop the odd witticism in his shambolic tirades, but it’s mostly Rough, and not a lot of Diamond. You can tell just having Lori there is meaningful given how solitary his life has become, however. Even later, as their pretences about Lori’s true intentions are done away with, it’s clear that the old man has been invigorated by the betrayal: he detests his children (whom he refers to as the “heirs abhorrent”) and self-describes as “a man who has spent decades googling himself” – Lori is the most interesting thing that’s happened to him in years. 

Indeed, the way the relationship of these two central characters refuses to stop taking on new dimensions, recontextualising itself, or even filling in gaps we didn’t know existed, endows the film with a gloriously tight pace. The script by Ed Solomon (who’s collaborated with Soderbergh before, most recently on the miniseries Full Circle), is constantly moving forward, while managing to wring frequent humour out of its leads’ behaviour, and their push-and-pull for the upper hand. One could argue that cracks show as the film has to conclude and the mercenary, unscrupulous nature of Corden and Gunning’s characters is doubled down on – they’re almost cartoonish (and it’s worth noting that Soderbergh has chosen two decidedly non-skinny actors to cast as the antagonists of the more normatively-bodied protagonists…) and while that aspect justified itself for me it would be difficult to deny it’s pitched far broader than the rest of the film. 

Ultimately, the film succeeds on the simple pleasures of two great performers delivering a thoughtful script that builds out for them complex, fully-formed characters while being plotted like a relay race. The Christophers does not have a sexy Hollywood sales angle – it’s an art forgery film, after all – but it’s further proof that we’re yet to get a clear sign there’s anything that Steven Soderbergh can’t pull off.

The Christophers is screening in cinemas from Thursday the 4th of June.