The Christophers may be about a forgery scheme, but there’s nothing derivative about the films of Steven Soderbergh. The director’s third feature of 2025—following the first-person haunted house tale Presence and the star-studded thriller Black Bag—proves that no contemporary filmmaker is as distinctive and eclectic.
Reteaming with his Mosaic, No Sudden Move, and Full Circle screenwriter Ed Solomon, the director’s latest, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a comedic drama about a once-famous painter, his greedy adult kids, and the art restorer whom they enlist to finish their father’s incomplete final works.
With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs.
Lori (Coel) earns a living operating a food truck near London Bridge, but she receives a chance to earn considerably more cash courtesy of a call from Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie Milton (Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning), who want her to pull off a devious scam: covertly complete their illustrious dad Julian Skar’s (McKellen) long-abandoned third series of “Christopher” paintings, which they believe can be sold for millions once he dies.
Since Julian is apparently in dire shape, this isn’t much of a long con, and Lori accepts the gig because, aside from the profit, it will give her the opportunity to exact revenge against Julian for a long-ago infraction. Appearing on the man’s doorstep, she claims to be applying for an assistant position. Since Julian likes to talk about himself and has no interest in hearing the banal reasons why Lori might want to be close to him, she doesn’t have to work hard to hide her identity and intentions.
Julian’s home has a cluttered, lived-in grunginess that reflects his disposition. McKellen—whether wearing an open robe or a big comfy sweater whose pockets are ideal for holding wine bottles—embodies him as an imperious blowhard who thinks himself a giant, and also a bitter recluse who’s well aware that he hasn’t produced anything of worth in three decades and, therefore, has become the thing he dreads most: irrelevant.
Details about Julian’s career trickle out of the action in drips and drabs, and eventually, it’s clear that his initial renown came from two separate series of portraits of a man named Christopher, and his later fame was due to his starring role as the Simon Cowell-ish prick judge on the reality TV series Art Fight. Now, he pays for his meals by recording cantankerous Cameos for £149—or £249 if he signs off with a pantomime of his trademark signature.
Without asking her a single substantive question, Julian hires Lori, and when she returns the following day, he tests her mettle by inquiring about her love life; when told that this is inappropriate because he’s in a position of power, he rightly agrees that he’s using his power to get an answer.
Suspecting that his “rat” kids want them for their own financial gain, he tells Lori to shred the partial Christophers stored in the upstairs bathtub. Lori, of course, has other plans; back at her studio, she forges the paintings (working from photographs) and then shreds them, the idea being to pull a fast switcharoo on Julian. Alas, that doesn’t work, since Julian quickly changes his mind, ordering her to instead burn them in a fire pit.
Lori thus reaches an early crossroads, compelling her to make a daring decision that’s the beginning of The Christophers’ cascading collection of complications.
Issues related to originality and phoniness, and inspiration and duplication, run rife through Soderbergh’s film, and the director visualizes the shifting power dynamics of Lori and Julian’s relationship through attentive handheld camerawork and subtle framing. Among his many talents, the director has a knack for conveying (and enhancing) his material’s emotional, psychological, and thematic undercurrents through understated, meticulous compositions.
Even something as seemingly ordinary as a shot-reverse shot sequence in which his main characters are confined to a narrow sliver of the screen by the other’s body (or, in a separate scene, an easel) is a model of evocative efficiency.
The Christophers is lean and confident, wasting no energy as it pits Julian against Lori in a battle that’s not simply about the Christophers; the longer they squabble and spar, the more they reveal the doubt, regret, hurt, and self-loathing fueling their enmity.
Solomon’s script is overflowing with caustic one-liners that speak, piercingly, to Julian’s insecurities and acrimony, and McKellen is in tip-top form as the nasty has-been, who hides his anxieties and shortcomings behind a façade of condescending hostility. At 86 years old, the legendary actor captures the sorrow, pity, and fury of old age, and of losing one’s titanic gifts (and loves), with sly, malicious wit, and he’s perfectly paired with Cole, whose stern, silent demeanor makes her, at least on the surface, the polar opposite of her senior-citizen adversary.
As things get knottier between Julian and Lori, The Christophers transforms from a black comic caper to a character study about artists too scared, and scarred, to express something true, and the various coping mechanisms they employ to avoid having to face their demons.
Dramatically speaking, the film is unflashy; most of it involves two people verbally jousting, for extended stretches, in messy interior spaces. Such chattiness, however, is never staid, since Soderbergh’s stewardship gives the proceedings a dancer-like litheness. It’s a two-hander that imparts an expansive sense of its protagonists’ inner lives and, with that, their struggle to create and, then, to keep creating no matter the pain, shame, remorse, and sorrow that comes with it.
The Christophers has great fun miring itself in Julian and Lori’s rollercoaster tête-à-tête, and Soderbergh and Solomon ultimately bestow upon them both a well-earned measure of grace.
It’s McKellen and Cole, though, who ultimately make the film such a front-to-back delight. Their performances at once forceful and elusive, nimble and sharp, and their rapport raw, jagged, and overflowing with loneliness, fear, and ferocity, they’re an ideally at-odds match, and turn Soderbergh’s latest into an amusing portrait of artistic warfare.
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