‘The Christophers’: Intrigue swirls around an aging queer painter

As art monsters go, Julian Clark (out gay actor Ian McKellen) is no Picasso. Furious about being canceled, he never specifies what he did. He’s better known for his appearances on the reality show “Art Fight,” where he insulted young painters, than his work. Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers,” written by Ed Solomon, lays him out as a particular case study. Now an elderly man, he was once a daring queer rebel. The world left him behind long ago, leading him to engage in stunts like selling his paintings to passersby on the sidewalk even though they’re worth millions. He remarks, “I was bisexual when it mattered,” and thinks his generation got sex right. The script and McKellen’s performance stop just short of caricature. In comparison to John Lithgow’s similarly conservative-with-age queer character in “Jimpa,” Julian is a marvel of subtlety. This could’ve become an extended “OK, boomer” joke, but it cuts sharper. Julian’s children (played by James Corden and out lesbian actor Jessica Gunning) can’t stand their father. Expecting him to die soon, they hire Lori (Michaela Coel) to “complete” unfinished paintings lurking in his archive, creating believable forgeries. (The film’s title describes his portraits of his former partner.) A frustrated painter, she makes a living toiling in a food truck. She applies for a job working as Julian’s assistant, and she gets hired. He carries on pontificating in front of her. Although she tries to refrain from revealing her true purpose, he gradually turns suspicious. Julian is more tolerable because his children are so slimy. Corden puts the negative energy that’s hovered around him for the last few years to good use here. Gunning played the stalker in Netflix’s series “Baby Reindeer.” While she doesn’t repeat the performance here — her character is cunning, not mentally ill — she proves her skill as a villain once again. Although their characters’ evil is never tempered, both actors give engaging performances. At 86, some of Julian’s aging must be McKellen’s own (while Soderbergh and Solomon are both in their 60s). He can’t keep his laughter from turning into a sneezing fit. His health is declining, yet he still has tremendous brio. McKellen shows how one can decline physically while remaining sharp mentally. Against him, Coel holds her own. Her character develops beyond her initially reticence to speak. She seems stand-offish, worried about revealing too much about herself, to the point of being passive-aggressive. Some of this is generational — she’s uneasy about telling Julian whether she has a boyfriend and tells him to cover up when he walks around his house in a bathrobe — but she warms up slowly. By the end, the narrative’s baton has been passed over to her. Soderbergh typically works as his own director of photography, using the pseudonym Peter Andrews. On last year’s ghost story “Presence,” he strapped the camera to his body in order to deliver an image from the perspective of the haunting itself. “The Christophers” isn’t quite as extreme, but the camera goes handheld for every moment inside Julian’s house. Set in Julian’s house, “The Christophers” makes tight use of limited space. The plot is reminiscent of a number of plays about aging, egotistical male artists. Soderbergh’s staging brings out its theatrical quality. He uses camera movement to create a nervous excitement, corresponding to the film’s twists. You may be wondering where “The Christophers” is headed, as it veers from comedy into a thriller, but the sense that the audience is in good hands never wavers. Soderbergh has been prolific his entire career. He’s found the secret of making as many films as he wants. He claims to have wasted two and a half years on an unproduced “Star Wars” movie, but you’d never know from his recent rate of productivity. “The Christophers” is his fourth film to premiere since 2023, a year in which he also directed both a limited series for Max and a web series. “Presence” was the weakest link in this recent run, feeling rather slapdash and gimmicky. (The answer to the issue of whose ghost occupies its haunted was jaw-droppingly inane.) He’s standing on much more solid ground with “The Christophers,” thanks to McKellen and Coel’s performances. Soderbergh did most of his best work, such as “Out Of Sight” and “Erin Brockovich,” in the kind of serious but unpretentious films aimed at adults that Hollywood no longer produces. (“The Christophers” was made independently.) Like Soderbergh’s spy thriller “Black Bag,” released last year, “The Christophers” is made with an casual efficiency that now looks anomalous. “The Christophers” | Directed by Steven Soderbergh | NEON | Opens April 10th