Director – Steven Soderbergh – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 100m
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Two siblings hire a young art restorer to forge some of their famous artist father’s unfinished paintings before he dies so they can collect on their posthumous sale –out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 15th
Professional art restorer Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) runs a London fast food stall between painting restoration gigs. Then she gets a phone call and meets in a pub with Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Guning), the son and daughter of ageing artist Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) who, worried that their father is about to die imminently from a medical condition, want to ensure he (for which read Lori) ‘completes’ (for which read ‘forges’) the third, unfinished series of paintings known as the Christophers after the model Julian used.
Against her better judgement, she accepts the gig, and finds herself playing the ruse of working as Julian’s assistant, basically an excuse for getting into his studio and forging the completed works on canvas as a nest egg for his children who, it later transpires, have already sold the as yet unpainted works to a buyer for a tidy sum.… Read the rest