The Best Offer (2013)
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
Virgil Oldman is a world renowned antiques expert and auctioneer. An eccentric genius, he leads a solitary life, going to extreme lengths to keep his distance from the messiness of human relationships. When appointed by the beautiful but emotionally damaged Claire to oversee the valuation and sale of her family’s priceless art collection, Virgil allows himself to form an attachment to her – and soon he is engulfed by a passion which will rock his bland existence to the core.
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Virgil becomes obsessed with the unseen Claire, in a manner reminiscent of the hard-bitten Dana Andrews falling in love with the painting of Gene Tierney in Otto Preminger's " Laura ".
It's a poor man's Vertigo in the end, attempting to capture an enigmatic aura that surrounds an out-of-reach female beauty, but lacking in the compelling qualities that Hitchcock was able to evoke through poetic rhythms, emotional yearning, and hypnotic atmosphere.
Tornatore's first English-language feature The Best Offer could be titled Agoraphobia - as Hitch titled Vertigo (1958).
Claire’s mysterious condition, and the particulars of Virgil’s growing bond with her, carry shades of Vertigo-style obsession and even a bit of Spike Jonze’s Her in the length of time she spends as a disembodied voice.
An English-lingo art world thriller with shades of "Hugo" should be a creatively winning combination for Giuseppe Tornatore's sumptuous "The Best Offer," yet beneath the varnish lies a work crying out for proper subtext.
Could it be the mechanical man we all fondly remember from Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”?
Oldman also picks up pieces of an automaton – apparently left over from "Hugo" – and takes them to a young mechanic (Jim Sturgess) who assembles them and hands out advice to the lovesick old Cyrano.
Complicating matters are a playboy mechanic (Jim Sturgess) and a 19th-century automaton straight out of Hugo.
Add a Hugo-esque robot, a dwarf with a perfect mathematical memory and a thick air of moody, gloomy, swooning romance and you get one (im)perfect storm of cinematic oddity c/o Italian writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore, best known for his charming cinematic love letter Cinema Paradiso (1988).
Though it begs for a little lightening up, a moment of irony, a wink at the audience, this dead-serious fairy tale about a mysterious young woman (and a phantom automaton straight out of Hugo) is worth watching for Geoffrey Rush’s sensitive, never pandering performance as an effete master auctioneer who gradually discovers he has a heart.
Such a blunt, shorthand approach to characterization works just fine in a goofy fantasy (Edward Scissorhands, say), but it tends to clang in a more naturalistic context, especially when combined with an illustrative surname like Oldman, meant to remind the viewer that a May-December romance is taking place.
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Oldman likes to sit in his ladies-only gallery and gawk, a 60-year-old virgin who just likes to watch and be with his forbidden fruit the way art lovin' assassin Clint Eastwood did in "The Eiger Sanction."
It ends up as a lame Brian De Palma knockoff, more "Femme Fatale" than "Blow Out."
There's the forgery theme, there's the automaton theme and its questions of life and identity, all of which were handled better in " Certified Copy " and " Hugo ", not to mention dystopian noir melodramas like " Blade Runner ".
Directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), the film creates an appealingly uncompromising protagonist and a lush sense of suspense straight out of a 1940s film like “Suspicion” or “Rebecca.”
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Directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), the film creates an appealingly uncompromising protagonist and a lush sense of suspense straight out of a 1940s film like “Suspicion” or “Rebecca.”
It ends up as a lame Brian De Palma knockoff, more "Femme Fatale" than "Blow Out."