Starring: Alex Lutz, Léa Drucker, Nora Hamzawi, Louise Chevillotte, Arcadi Radeff
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 91 mins. Reviewed in Jul 2025
Reviewer: Ann Rennie
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André Masson, specialist in modern art, receives a letter according to which a painting by Egon Schiele had been discovered in Mulhouse. The discovery puts his career in danger.
As someone who enjoys the theatre of the art auction, its nods and winks of bidding and the final hammer fall, and has, on occasion, bought a little gem, I enjoyed this film a great deal. The art world is full of smooth-talking types and earnest academics and interns hoping to get ahead. Like many, I watch as sales of masterpieces become stratospheric or an underpriced or unknown artist steals the show. It is endlessly fascinating, and this film opened up some of the reality and the machinations of those top-end art houses who deal discreetly with the monied class.
This film is set mainly in Paris at the auction house, Scotties, and is inspired by a true story. Here the reputation of the firm and the quality of the paintings it sells and the prices they command are of acute importance. Andre Masson (Lutz) plays the role of the auctioneer well, ranging between coolly dismissive and charmingly effusive, depending on his audience. Early on he tells his intern that the art auction industry is a ‘no-sulk business’. He is a chameleon, more artifice than art, but not unlikable. He is divorced, drinks too much and has a good eye, especially for prized works. He has some autonomy but is ultimately an employee. His ex-wife Bettina (Drucker) is an art appraiser and still fond of him.
The backstory is to do with the discovery of an Egon Schiele painting in factory worker Martin’s (Radeff) home in the country. Schiele was an Austrian Expressionist artist whose works were considered degenerate by the Nazis and routinely destroyed. However, the provenance for this painting shows that it was owned by a Jewish family whose relatives are alive in America. Martin is not interested in how much money he might make and it is this thread which uncovers a new development in Masson’s principles. The intern in the film, Aurore (Chevillotte) has an interesting backstory and has learned certain skills from her antiquarian bookselling father who is now bankrupt.
There is some good dialogue and frank throwaway lines in the film. The characters are real and there is a rather moving scene in which Martin is applauded. There is something of a new start for Andre as he decides, despite being offered the CEO job after the successful sale of the Schiele painting, that he wants to work in the art field independently.
This is a film for anyone interested in art or history or the interior workings of auction houses. Having loved The Monuments Men and liked Woman in Gold, this film sits somewhere in the middle and is a reminder of the people, sellers and buyers and their intermediaries, who make the art world turn. It has a lightish feel, but the backstory is a dark reminder of what happened in Germany before and during World War II.
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