The Christophers review: Soderbergh turns family greed and art-world deception into a sharp cinema pick

There is a quiet pleasure in watching a film about people who believe they understand value, only to reveal that they understand almost nothing about worth. The Christophers is that kind of film. It begins with art, money and inheritance, but its sharper interest lies in ego, decay, resentment and the strange intimacy that can form between people who start by using each other.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Ed Solomon, The Christophers stars Ian McKellen as Julian Sklar, an ageing and once-celebrated British painter, and Michaela Coel as Lori Butler, a gifted art restorer drawn into a morally dubious scheme. The film is listed in Irish cinema programmes as a 100-minute UK-US production and opened in UK and Irish cinemas on 15 May 2026.

The premise has the neatness of a heist, though the film is less interested in stealing art than in manufacturing it. Julian’s children want access to the value locked inside his unfinished work. Lori is hired to help complete or reproduce pieces that could transform a family estate into cash. Around that plan, Soderbergh builds a comedy-drama about authenticity, ownership and the terrible things families do when legacy becomes a financial instrument.

Ian McKellen gives the film its rough, cracked centre. Julian is not a cuddly old genius. He is rude, vain, wounded and often exhausting. The film does not ask the viewer to excuse him too quickly. That is part of the pleasure. McKellen lets the character be difficult in a way that feels earned rather than theatrical. His age is not sentimentalised. His talent is not treated as a free pass. He is a man who has made art, made enemies and made himself nearly impossible to live with.

Michaela Coel is the film’s counterweight. Lori is composed, alert and hard to read. She does not enter Julian’s world as a wide-eyed admirer, and she is not simply a moral innocent corrupted by rich people. Coel plays her with reserve, intelligence and a kind of controlled patience. The best scenes are between her and McKellen because they have the charge of two people testing each other before either is willing to admit curiosity.

That relationship is where The Christophers becomes more than a clever art-world plot. The film works because Lori and Julian are not natural allies. Their connection develops through friction. He insults. She absorbs, redirects and occasionally cuts back. He assumes authority. She quietly refuses to be overpowered by it. Their scenes give the film its rhythm, and the performances make the emotional movement feel sharper than the mechanics of the scheme around them.

Soderbergh’s direction is clean and controlled. He does not overdecorate the film, which is wise. A story about art-world value could easily become too pleased with its own taste. Instead, the film keeps things moving. It has polish, but not stiffness. The humour comes from character and situation rather than big comic set-pieces.

The supporting roles add a more openly comic charge. James Corden and Jessica Gunning play Julian’s children, and the film uses them to expose the uglier side of inheritance anxiety. They are not interested in art as feeling, process or difficulty. They are interested in art as asset. That gives the film one of its clearest ideas: once art becomes a commodity, even family memory can be priced, packaged and sold.

The film is also sly about authenticity. If an unfinished work is completed by another hand, what exactly is being bought? The artist’s name? The image? The market’s willingness to believe? The film does not turn these questions into a lecture. It lets them emerge through plot. That is much better. The Christophers knows that the art world can be absurd, but it also knows that absurdity is most effective when people take it with complete seriousness.

The title refers to the set of works that drive the story, but it also carries a slightly ghostly quality. These paintings matter because of what they might be, what people say they are, and what they could become if the market accepts the story attached to them. That makes the film feel less like a conventional con movie and more like a study of how value is performed.

Not every part of the film is equally strong. Some of the family-greed material is broad, and the satirical edges occasionally feel familiar. Viewers who know Soderbergh’s lighter crime films may expect more twist and snap than the film ultimately wants to provide. Its real interest is quieter. It is less about whether the scheme succeeds than about what the scheme reveals.

That may frustrate anyone expecting a tight thriller. The Christophers is better approached as a chamber piece with comic movement. It has deception, but its most satisfying turns are emotional rather than procedural. The film’s question is not only “who is fooling whom?” It is “what do these people need the lie to do for them?”

McKellen and Coel are strong enough to carry that question. Their chemistry is not romantic in the obvious sense, and that is refreshing. It is intellectual, prickly and wary. They bring out different kinds of guardedness in each other. He hides behind cruelty and reputation. She hides behind competence and stillness. Watching those defences shift is the film’s most rewarding element.

For Irish cinema audiences, The Christophers is a useful arthouse counterpoint to franchise releases and louder summer films. It is adult, performance-led and built around dialogue, character and moral ambiguity. It does not need spectacle. Its pleasures are in timing, tone and the slow reveal of motive.

The art-world setting also gives the film wider appeal because the subject is not really art. It is the way people use beauty to disguise appetite. Julian’s children want the paintings because they can be converted into money. Lori wants something more complicated. Julian may want to protect his work, but he also wants to protect the story he tells about himself. Everyone in the film is curating something.

That is why The Christophers lingers. It is not a great radical reinvention of Soderbergh’s style, but it is sharp, witty and quietly humane. It knows that deception is not always about greed alone. Sometimes it is about grief, pride, fear and the desire to leave behind a version of yourself that other people will not spoil.

Verdict
The Christophers is a smart, performance-led comedy-drama with a fine central pairing in Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. It is sharper as a character study than as a heist film, but its art-world deception, dry humour and questions about value make it a strong arthouse choice.

Rating
4 / 5