We take a look at what is being said about Steven Soderbergh’s latest film starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel.
The Guardian: ***** “McKellen is voluble, needling, vulnerable and pathetic; Coel is calm and withholding. She jiujitsus his arrogant insults against him through her refusal to be baited, intuiting and articulating his decline more clearly than Julian himself dares – but also suggests ways back that he hadn’t guessed at. The double act of McKellen and Coel has the onscreen chemistry of the year.”
The Telegraph: ** “Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers should never have reached the screen in its current state.”
The Independent: **** “Soderbergh seems just as curious about the answers, and his camera hovers eagerly like a third body in the room, crouched behind bits of furniture or stood unobtrusively off to the side. If that observer ever had anything to say, I doubt Julian would let them. McKellen’s work here is his best since his Gandalf days, reinterpreting the elder artist into a mad king, fuelled and decimated by his own ego.”
BFI.org: “The spectacle – and the heart – of the film is contained within the pair’s engrossing sparring matches, Julian’s grandstanding declarations pinging off Lori’s impassive insights. Rolling repeatedly from spiky to sad, from feuding to fellow-feeling, they create an unabashedly theatrical effect, full of peacocking wit from McKellen (“I was in a ‘throuple’ back when it was merely called infidelity”) and knowing culture-clash comedy. “
Empire Online: **** “This is a film which benefits from three elements. There’s Soderbergh’s careful, sly, unshowy direction, which keeps things compelling. There’s the delicious original script by Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted and Men In Black), full of poison-tongued dialogue and rug-pulling turns. And there are sublime performances from its leads, Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, both absolutely at the top of their game.”
Slant Magazine: ” But, as a director who doesn’t write, Soderbergh is at the mercy of the material he chooses, and Solomon has come through with a fine script that brims with hilarious dialogue, lightly satirical observations of a culture that treats art as a commodity, and satisfying payoffs to a number of story elements planted early on. For such a dialogue-heavy film mostly centered on just two characters, The Christophers feels as rich and expansive as anything Soderbergh has ever done.”
Screen Daily: “You just wonder, however, if there’s more meat on this bone. Soderbergh doesn’t maximize the mostly single setting of Julian’s townhouse narratively or visually. Despite Soderbergh and DoP Peter Andrews opting for wide angle lenses, we actually see very little of Julian’s eccentric home. The backlighting that gave Black Bag its uncanny glow sometimes obscures Coel here. Complex aspects of the narrative, such as Lori’s traumatic past with Julian, are also too easily smoothed over, while Julian’s broad statements about art border on cliche. In that sense, once the punchlines fade, The Christophers only leaves glancing marks.”
The Arts Desk: **** “Steven Soderbergh directs Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel in virtuoso performances.”
The Christophers is out in cinemas now.