There’s nothing quite like seeing one legend play another. With The Christophers — currently at Montpelier’s Savoy Theater and starting Friday at Burlington’s Partizanfilm — renowned thespian Ian McKellen gets a role he can sink his teeth into: a mercurial artist poisoned by his own fame.
Director Steven Soderbergh follows up last year’s spy drama Black Bag, also set in London, with this thought-provoking two-hander about the art world. The second half of the equation — Michaela Coel, creator and star of the BBC/HBO Max series “I May Destroy You” — is more than capable of matching McKellen’s intensity.
The deal
While working at a food truck, disillusioned artist Lori Butler (Coel) gets a call from an art school classmate: Sallie Sklar (Jessica Gunning), daughter of household-name painter Julian Sklar (McKellen). Julian’s fame rests on two series of paintings called the “Christophers,” portraits of his lover from the 1990s. They’ve soared in value and sold for millions, but the artist never completed his planned third “Christopher” series. Instead, he became a victim of his own celebrity, baiting the media and appearing on a reality show where he skewered aspiring artists with cruel wit.
Now, as Julian approaches the end of his life, his estranged children, Sallie and Barnaby (James Corden), resort to crime in hopes of milking some gain from his legacy. Because Lori has a special talent for imitating the styles of other artists, Sallie hires her to pose as Julian’s assistant, thus gaining access to his sketches for the final “Christophers.” In exchange for a cut of the profits, Lori agrees to surreptitiously complete the paintings so that Julian’s heirs can “discover” and sell them after his death.
There’s just one problem: Julian is much more on the ball than he’s led his kids to believe. He’s not about to allow himself to be counterfeited, exploited or outwitted. And despite Lori’s masquerade, he immediately pegs her as an artist and a potential rival.
Will you like it?
The Christophers is a toothsome concoction. Plenty of credit goes to Ed Solomon’s clever screenplay and to Soderbergh’s artful use of space and production design, which makes the cluttered rooms of Julian’s house feel like characters. But the movie wouldn’t work without two top-of-their-game performances.
Crafting a film’s plot around a fictional celebrity is tricky, especially a visual artist whose brilliance we expect to see. Soderbergh makes the canny decision to keep Julian’s art mostly off-screen, so we don’t get caught up in wondering whether it justifies all the fuss. Our attention is on McKellen, who convinces us that Julian is every bit as famous — in a flamboyant, conflicted, many-times-canceled way — as he’s supposed to be.
The painter is an actor himself, a showman as much as a craftsman, and McKellen wears the role as effortlessly as he does the dingy splendor of Julian’s dressing gowns. From our first glimpse of him, hunched over his laptop recording Cameo fan videos (from which he ekes out a living), we know Julian: his bloviating contempt for the 21st century, his poisonous humor, his unrepentant selfishness tempered with flashes of self-awareness. It adds up to an all-too-believable portrait of a Silent Generation icon who won’t forgive the world for adoring him too much — or for leaving him behind.
The Christophers has elements of a generational clash story, with money-grubbing millennials Barnaby and Sallie rolling their eyes at their dad’s obstinance. Their one-note characters are the film’s weakest point. But when they’re off-screen we easily forget about them, because Coel’s Lori is no stereotype.
Playing a writer and social media maven in “I May Destroy You,” Coel delivered monologues fierce enough to give Julian a run for his money. In The Christophers, she impeccably deploys a different tool: silence. Throughout their early scenes, Julian babbles while Lori reacts, her micro-expressions revealing with merciless eloquence what she thinks of him (not much). As he grows curiouser about her — and suspicious of her motives — their conversations become a cat-and-mouse game.
The forgery plot at the heart of The Christophers may lead audiences to expect a thriller. But the crime angle instead sets up a juicy character study, making us reflect on art, fame, mortality and the unlikely ways in which kindred spirits connect across generations.
Julian has unfinished business that goes far beyond his “Christophers,” and McKellen and Solomon never make the mistake of softening the artist into a curmudgeon with a heart of gold. To pity Julian would be to misunderstand him. Lori grasps that, which makes her the person best equipped to nudge him toward some form of closure.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, could forgery be a kind of empathy? A story of star-crossed, combative yet real friendship, The Christophers leaves us sketching out our own answers to that question.
If you like this, try…
Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery (2014; Kanopy, OVID, check your local library): There are plenty of real-life analogues to the film’s fictional Lori, with her uncanny talent for replicating other artists’ styles. This documentary explores how Wolfgang Beltracchi passed off his own works as “newly discovered” creations of 20th-century masters.
A Genuine Forger (2015; Kanopy, rentable): Guy Ribes, who used a similar talent to create and sell “lost” impressionist works, tells his story.
Real Fake: The Life, Art & Crimes of Elmyr De Hory (2017; Prime Video, Tubi, rentable): The subject of Orson Welles’ F for Fake claimed to have sold more than 1,000 forgeries to art galleries.
This article appears in April 22 • 2026.
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