The Christophers movie review: Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel in Steven Soderbergh’s art caper

There is so much pleasure in a great two-hander.

To be able to watch two actors of calibre play out their characters together, creating that chemistry, lobbing and glances back and forth, it’s a gift.

When those two thespians are Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel, and the director is Steven Soderbergh, all you want to do is sit up and pay attention. To live in this carefully crafted world for 100 minutes – you couldn’t ask for more.

The Christophers is an art world drama that disarms you with its emotional heft without you noticing that you had been trapped in its embrace. You were having too good a time just going along with it.

Soderbergh, directing from a script by Ed Solomon, makes it seem so effortless.

Coel plays Lori, a young artist who still paints but no longer exhibits her creations. She gets by working casual shifts in food trucks and dabbles in restoration work.

Out of the blue, she gets a call from a former art school classmate, Sallie (Jessica Gunning), with a job from her and her brother, Barnaby (James Corden). They are the children of a famous artist, Julian (McKellan), who was once acclaimed in past decades.

Julian is best known for his series of paintings called “The Christophers”, portraits of his lover at the time. Just one of “The Christophers” can fetch up to £2 million, and there is a third, unfinished series that Julian has never shown anyone.

The unscrupulous Sallie and Barnaby, who are estranged from their father, has hatched a plan in which they want Lori to apply for a job as Julian’s assistant and then secretly finish the paintings so they can be “discovered” in his home after his death.

Lori is dubious but she has her own, brief history with Julian (one he does not remember but which great affected her), which Sallie exploits.

At the centre of the film is the building relationship between these two artists for whom creativity is at the core of their purpose, but they both have complicated relationships to those impulses.

It’s less a study in contrasts – he at the end of his artistic life, she stalled in hers – and more about realising, through each other’s presence and influence, what it means to them. We later discover why Lori no longer exhibits, and Julian’s role in that change.

McKellan and Coel are both so wonderful in these roles. These performances are grounded, connected and a little irreverent – and they’re so in sync with each other and with Soderbergh’s direction. It’s as if, as a group, they’re a little three-piece band, each hitting the right note at the right time.

The Christophers may start off almost as an art caper, there is, after all, a plot to essentially defraud, but it quickly morphs into a lowkey drama in which the intimate human story is the real tale.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Christophers is in cinemas