The Christophers (2025 | UK | 98 minutes | Steven Soderbergh)
Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) has followed the familiar trajectory from enfant terrible to full-blown crank. Once a renowned artist, he now spends most of his time not painting and recording Cameo-style videos—often for mothers urging their children to pursue art (in this economy?). Dressing is optional. There was also a regrettable stint as a judge on a reality show that makes Simon Cowell look like the Easter Bunny.
The subject that causes the most fascination around Sklar, though, is “the Christophers,” a series of seven unfinished paintings of a former male lover ages ago. (Full disclosure: I was born a Christopher.) What if we learn, upon Julian’s death, that the Christophers aren’t unfinished at all? That would be quite lucrative for his awful children Sally and Barnaby (Jessica Gunning and James Corden). For them, Sklar’s less-than-zero interest in finishing the paintings before he dies is not so much a slammed door as an inconvenience.
The younger Sklars reach out an acquaintance of Sally’s for help: Lori Butler (Michaela Coel). She’s also an art restorer and an artist in her own right. The plan is to get her a job as their father’s assistant and that would give her the access to the paintings to finish the remaining six (the explanation for why six and not seven caused one of the biggest laughs I’ve had in a theater, at least since SPAMALOT.
With some reluctance, Lori accepts the job. She has a few axes to grind with Senior Sklar, and forging his lost masterpieces becomes a quiet form of revenge. She’s written some lukewarm blog posts about how he’s lost his way: the usual complaints about an old white man failing to reaffirm his progressive bona fides. That proves to be ill-advised.
Pro tip: assume elderly people don’t know how to google at your own peril.
Directing a script from Ed Solomon, Steven Soderbergh’s newest has a lot going for it. The interplay between Coel and McKellen is often fun and smart. It also has the trappings of a Soderbergh film: a brisk pace, sharp dialogue, and you’re never really sure about whose loyalties lie where. The Christophers isn’t as sleek as his previous Black Bag, but few are. The ending loses a little steam but the generational tension between Coel and McKellen and the the unholy combination of greed and stupidity from Sally and Barnaby generates plenty of laughs. Moreover, there’s something almost too on-the-nose about casting James Corden as an insufferable failson.
The film may stumble at the finish, but it understands something essential: in the art world, as in families, the true masterpiece is knowing exactly how much you can get away with.
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The Christophers opens at SIFF Cinema Uptown on Thursday, April 16.