The art world has always been a fertile ground for stories about deception, reinvention, and greed. Steven Soderbergh’s The Cristophers leans into those themes with sly, slow-burning wit, anchored by a towering late-career performance from Ian McKellen. The result is part family tragedy, part caper, and part critique of the way legacy becomes a currency all its own. While not every subplot lands with equal weight, the film is an absorbing, often wickedly funny meditation on what it means to create and to steal without losing its meaning.
McKellen plays Julian Sklar, once a celebrated artist of London’s 1960s and ’70s pop art scene. Now, decades past his heyday, he’s a ghost of that flamboyant era. Broke, cynical, and prickly, Julian lives in a crumbling townhouse that feels more like a mausoleum than an artist’s sanctuary. His two estranged adult children (perfectly cast by the way) played by James Corden and Jessica Gunning, circle him with all the warmth of vultures. They’ve long since given up hope that their father might reconnect with them emotionally; instead, they’re desperate for a financial inheritance that has yet to materialize. Their solution: orchestrate a con that involves reviving the very thing Julian has abandoned, which is his art.
Enter Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), an art restorer with a checkered past. Once a talented forger, Lori is enlisted to pose as Julian’s new assistant, while secretly completing eight unfinished canvases hidden away in storage. The plan is simple: after Julian’s death, the paintings will be “discovered” and sold as his final works, securing the financial windfall his children crave. But as Lori grows closer to Julian, the boundaries between authenticity and imitation, truth and invention, begin to blur in ways no one expects.
The film’s visual language mirrors Julian’s emotional interior: faded, brittle, but occasionally pierced by bursts of chaotic color. These choices elevate what could have been a straightforward heist plot into something more textured. The real con, The Cristophers suggests, is not the forgery itself but the way families rewrite history, convincing themselves that betrayal is just another form of survival.
McKellen is, unsurprisingly, magnificent. At 86, he imbues Julian with a mixture of razor-edged bitterness and frail vulnerability. His line deliveries half sneers, half whispered confessionsremind us why he’s one of the greatest living actors. There’s a moment late in the film when Julian, staring at one of Lori’s forged canvases, mutters, “I don’t remember painting this, but perhaps I did.” It’s at once tragic and darkly comic, encapsulating the film’s central tension: is art about authorship, memory, or the story others choose to tell about it?
Coel, too, delivers a layered performance as Lori. She emotes her dialogue like poetry. She navigates the precarious space between opportunist and empath, thief and caretaker. Her scenes with McKellen crackle with a push-pull energy. He sees through her ruse almost immediately, yet seems perversely amused by her audacity. Coel plays Lori as someone both terrified of being unmasked and oddly liberated by the chance to perform. If Julian’s children want to bury him under a false legacy, Lori seems determined to uncover the messy truth beneath it. This is one of Cole’s strongest performances to date in this role, and she truly goes toe-to-toe with McKellen is every scene which is no easy feat.
The casting of Corden and Gunning as the scheming siblings is inspired. Corden, best known for comedic roles, leans into a nastier register here. His character is a man-child convinced that inheritance will solve all his problems, but too cowardly to face his father directly. Gunning, meanwhile, brings a steely pragmatism to her role, embodying the more ruthless side of the sibling duo. Together, they represent the generational bitterness that fuels the plot: children who believe they were denied love and seek money in its place.
Still, the film occasionally falters under the weight of its competing tones. The satirical edge sometimes clashes with the more somber family drama, leaving certain sequences adrift. A subplot involving Lori’s former criminal activities feels underdeveloped, as if tacked on to heighten the sense of danger without fully integrating into the story’s emotional arc. At just over two hours, the pacing can feel uneven, lingering too long on atmospheric scenes at the expense of narrative momentum.
Yet when The Cristophers works, it’s spellbinding. The film’s most powerful moments come not from the mechanics of the con, but from the intimate exchanges between artist and forger, father and surrogate child. Julian, who has spent decades pushing away his real children, finds an unexpected connection with Lori, a woman who sees him not as a meal ticket or relic, but as someone worth studying. Their bond is complicated, transactional, even manipulative, but it’s also the closest thing to love the film offers.
The film suggests that in the end, authenticity is a story we agree to tell ourselves, whether about a painting, a family, or a life.
The Cristophers is not a flawless film, but it is a fascinating one. With its rich performances, sharp writing from Ed Solomon, and visual flair, it earns its place among this year’s most intriguing festival entries. For audiences willing to embrace its slippery morality and tonal shifts, it offers a rewarding meditation on the intersections of art, memory, and desire.
In the end, the film asks: who gets to decide what’s authentic? In a world where legacy is as fragile and as fabricated as a forged brushstroke, perhaps the only truth that matters is the one that survives.
The Christophers made its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
