It’s a dismal fact the media only gets excited about the visual arts when there is a high-profile forgery, some huge price paid for a work, or a daring robbery. Pascal Bonitzer’s The Stolen Painting, may sound like a heist movie but the reality is very different, which may be why the American release goes under the staid title, Auction.
The Stolen Painting is not a thriller, it’s character-driven, psychological drama with a mild air of mystery. The story is based on an actual event - the 2006 rediscovery of Egon Schiele’s Withered Sunflowers (1914), which disappeared during the Second World War and was found in the home of a French factory worker. Equipped with an excellent script and a talented cast, Bonitzer uses this incident as a tool to illuminate the secretive mechanisms of the art market. While most films about the artworld are ludicrous fantasies, this director has been scrupulous in his observations of a leading auction house.
That said, one meets very few art specialists so cocksure or well remunerated as Alex Lutz’s André Masson, Head of Modern Art for a major French firm with the unlikely name of Scottie’s. For Australian viewers this may suggest a brand of toilet paper or a small scraggy dog, but there’s nothing funny about the scale on which this company operates.