369. The Burnt Orange Heresy; movie review

 

 

THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY

Cert 15

98 mins

BBFC advice: Contains strong language, sex

There are glamour, seduction and a very clever finale but this is literally a slow, slow burn.

Indeed, more than an hour is spent laying the ground with myriad nods and winks of two handsome leads and two screen veterans to the backdrop of beautiful Lake Como.

Fortunately, I was still awake when the blue touch paper was finally lit.

Giuseppe Capotondi's The Burnt Orange Heresy stars Claes Bang as a handsome full-of-himself art critic of international renown who is touring Italy.

He has lust at first sight for a younger intellectual (Elizabeth Debicki) when she attends one of his lectures and, after some hectic rumpy-pumpy, he invites her to tag along to a weekend at the beautiful pad of an ultra-rich art collector (Mick Jagger).

The pair are pampered until the old fella reveals a proposal to pay the critic for extracting the most prized piece of art the world has never seen.

It transpires that an ultra-reclusive painter (Donald Sutherland), who disappeared after a gallery fire destroyed all of his work many years before, is living in the property next door.

Because nobody owns one of his paintings, the collector has determined that he must have one.

I rather enjoyed the wiliness of experience portrayed by both Jagger and Sutherland whose characters tie the critic into inescapable knots.

Thus, they prompt him into desperate actions.

This is especially true of Sutherland's artist who is impervious to any pressures which outsiders seek to force onto him.

However, I stand by my view that, while it contains snippets to admire, The Burnt Orange Heresy's power is diluted by scenes which are too languid.

So, I was long turned off by the time the bottle was uncorked and the action begins to flow.

That's a pity.

Reasons to watch: Clever thriller

Reasons to avoid: Its burn is too slow

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: Yes

Nudity: Yes

Overall rating: 6/10

Did you know? It is believed that Claude Monet destroyed as many as 500 in his own works. Infamously, a 1908 show of his work in Paris had to be postponed after he took a knife to at least 15 of his water lily canvases. After cataract surgery, he disposed of or reworked many of the paintings that were created at the height of his vision loss.

The final word. Giuseppe Capotondi: “It’s a story of power, of abuse of power, of truth and lies, and how easy, really, it is to fabricate new truths and sell them as the real thing, And I think it’s very pertinent to the times we’re living in,” 

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