While ordinarily we’d totally understand anyone’s excitement for the latest from Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso,” “The Star Maker,” “Malena“) you might want to temper that a little bit when approaching his latest, “The Best Offer.” The film, which has already seen release overseas and played some festival dates, hasn’t earned that much buzz, nor did it impress our own Jessica Kiang when she caught it in Berlin earlier this year. Declaring the movie “strangely old-fashioned in its construction and requiring a Golden Gate-level feat of engineering to achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary to unironically enjoy it,” it does at least have the always enjoyable Geoffrey Rush at the center of it.
The actor plays an aging auctioneer asked to handle the valuation and sale of a mysterious woman’s priceless heirlooms, finding himself soon enveloped by a passion that will change his life. Or, you can look at this way, from the official studio blurb: “It can be explained as a film about art, seen as the sublimation of love, but also as a film about love, seen as the product of art.” Alrighty.
Co-starring Donald Sutherland and Jim Sturgess, and featuring a score by Ennio Morricone, “The Best Offer” opens in limited release on January 3, 2014. Watch below.