THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – MUST SEE
With each of his new films released in dribs and drabs, Pascal Bonitzer, with a scriptwriting curriculum as long as his arm, seems to give himself a new writing challenge. In The stolen painting, this consists of investing in a professional environment, that of the art market, often touched upon by fiction, more rarely in-depth. And to make a universe of specialists coherent on screen, it is on the tightrope of language that the essential thing is played out, if it is true that every environment, even more than through its behavior, is firstly held together by his lexicon.
The argument is drawn from a real case that occurred in the early 2000s: the discovery of a painting by Egon Schiele reputedly lost for sixty years, in the home of a chemical worker in the suburbs of Mulhouse, subsequently ending by a record sale. André Masson (Alex Lutz), auctioneer for the Parisian branch of an international group (“Scottie’s”, a nod to the famous Christie’s house), is alerted by letter about a painting, which he rushes to authenticate in the company of his ex-wife Bertina (Léa Drucker) in a small ordinary house acquired as a life annuity.
They recognize, stunned, The sunflowers, a dark variation by the Austrian painter on the model of Van Gogh, stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family of collectors. In order to make this discovery the springboard of his career, André must still play it smart in the game of lying poker which then begins between heirs, experts, gallery owners and legal representatives.
A knot of vipers
It’s one thing to take an environment as a backdrop. It is another thing to grasp it in its functioning, its workings and ramifications. In what way the film proves convincing, orchestrating a round of well-chosen characters: the young mythomaniac intern (Louise Chevillotte), the straight-laced lawyer (Nora Hamzawi), the experts setting the value of a work on the market , the bigwigs who pull the strings and the fickle rich clients.
Bonitzer does not avoid technical matters: legal-economic issues, tough negotiations, part of the trade, which he manages to fictionalize with fluidity. This little world is camped like a knot of vipers. Far and dry exchanges take place there in speckled foils between large unpleasant beasts, evolving in luxury and places of power. From the first scenes between the commissioner and his intern Aurore, it is a question, to succeed in the profession, of “ do his whore “. And the filmmaker enjoys frolicking in this “whore’s tongue” sociability with its sharp edges.
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