What better than a tight, eloquent, Italian-set romance-thriller about the nature of an unctuous, drug-addled art critic to appear on the fall film festival circuit? Critics, industry folk, and fans all meeting at their wit’s end after multiple events’ worth of unrelenting conversation and rumination on film, only to find themselves in front of yet another feature—the meta-experience that is Giuseppe Capotondi’s second film, “The Burnt Orange Heresy.” Scott B. Smith’s adaptation of the 1971 Charles Williford novel of the same name plays like a cool, classy “Velvet Buzzsaw” for the art-obsessive, every trace of camp traded for poetry.
The film opens with an academic lecture. Renowned critic, James Figueras (Claes Bang playing a character parallel to his own in “The Square”)—a sharp, suave bachelor ever-allured by the mistresses of art and academia—stands confidently at the front of a decorative drawing-room, introducing a group of credulous old tourists to a messy yellow painting they find dull. He proceeds to explain the ravishing story behind it, and suddenly everyone wants a print. Moments later, he turns their astonishment into shame when he reveals that nothing he said was true. But it worked, didn’t it? They all wanted to buy the painting. So, what does it matter if it was true or not?
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The only person under 60 in the room is also the only person who’s poised and self-assured enough to call him out on his bullshit—Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki), a tall, fair, strikingly gorgeous young woman with nowhere to go and nothing to lose. She lingers in the back with a sly grin, and the next thing you know, the two are smoking a post-sex cigarette, jawing about theory, truth, and the role of the critic. James assumes he can run her around in circles until she accuses him of lying to the tourists, claiming that the story of the painting was true after all, and proving herself a “good artist” by definition. Impressed, James asks her to accompany him to a collector’s estate on Lake Como for the weekend, unaware of what awaits them.
The dubious art collector, Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger in his first role in eighteen years) cuts straight to the chase. Pulling James aside, he informs him that the iconic recluse painter, Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland) is staying in a cottage on his property. He offers James a once in a lifetime interview if James can promise to steal one of Debney’s paintings for him in the process. The critic bites at the chance, leaving Berenice in the dark about his intentions.
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Sutherland is magnificent as the fading, ancient painting of an artist content with his life, unburdened and untouched by the prying critics that hunt him, “those ravenous dogs,” he calls them. Debicki rises to the challenge of the great actor, giving every perfectly delivered line right back to Sutherland with her own sincere charm and enticing acuity, unbereft of some understated (and very European) #MeToo commentary when Debney shamefully admits that he and other artists used to “pass [a fellow artist] around like a talisman.” Simply put, they own all the film’s best scenes.
“The Burnt Orange Heresy” stunts as a thriller, but it’s most intriguing when it gives way to soulful questioning of the career of criticism, a profession subjective enough to dodge checks and balances and neglect the significance of honesty, if it so chooses. As Debney points out, it is, like life, nothing but a series of donning and removing masks layer by layer until what’s underneath is truly unrecognizable (or never known in the first place). One can take the true-blue route like Debney, or pursue the fierce, perilous cunning of James, always deflecting, his words never quite tangible or interpretable enough to let anyone in.
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He’s detached from the human experience in ways a critic can’t be if they want to ratify their significance in the cultural conscience. Or can they be? At the beginning, James paints a metaphor of critics as the walls of a river that properly direct the flow of the water (i.e. the people). This is the (potential) power of the critic. But he doesn’t comment on motivation. Is it self-obsession or human connection?
How can we tell when all a critic wants is their name on a banner across the top of the Tate, or an A-list party status? How do we communally suffer when those critics are more interested in guiding that river toward profit and fame? Is the resulting criticism more culturally, historically, or existentially bastardized? How do we know if we’re bathing in critical deceit? There’s no license, registration, proof of training, wisdom, or knowledge, no references. It’s as wide open to your average exhibitionist as it is your hopeless romantic.
Underneath the ensemble of performances, Craig Armstong’s intriguing score drives the power of these questions wonderfully, but the movie suffers in the last act, Berenice a victim of sudden mischaracterization. However, the first two acts hold so strongly, you might forget how it ended the next day. Or, perhaps, her shift is to the film’s credit. As the oft-quotable Debney says, “I’ve learned one thing in my long stay on this darkling plain, most people are not what you expect.” [B+]