You may have seen this described as an Italian film. That's a little misleading: None of the major actors are Italian, all the original dialog is in English, and it wasn't obvious to me that most of the story took place in Italy. But in a subtle way, the Italianness still matters.
Virgil (Geoffrey Rush), a world-class auctioneer specializing in paintings and antiques, is prone to superstition and unfriendliness. This may explain why he takes interest in one client, Claire (Sylvia Hoeks), who begs him to break from his routine and pay house calls -- er, mansion calls -- to assess her inherited property, on the grounds that she hasn't allowed anyone to see her in 12 years. She's not deformed; she just stopped wanting to be seen, even by a doctor in an emergency. Virgil turns to his craftsman associate, Robert (Jim Sturgess), for advice on how to get her to open up to him.
In a supporting role is Donald Sutherland (looking a bit like a slightly older Jeff Bridges) as Billy, Virgil's long-time comrade in an ongoing scheme. Virgil claims that prize paintings are actually forgeries, Billy wins them at the auctions for much less than their true prices, and Virgil buys them for a little more. I guess Billy doesn't value the paintings much himself, despite being an aspiring painter. Billy's importance to the story is not obvious until late in the game, after he warns that everything can be faked.
From a romantic standpoint, Virgil and Claire make an ugly pair. Not only are they both unabashedly rude with less-than-endearing eccentricities, but she's less than half his age. The way they come together isn't exactly sweet, either, and some breakthroughs feel forced. Of course, this could describe a lot of film romances, albeit more often in comedies.
Well, much as I hate to spoil, I must warn you that in the last maybe 15 minutes, it abruptly turns out not to be the genre I thought. Rarely have I experienced such a jarring twist in my viewing. It doesn't become fantasy or whatnot, but I needed a while to make sense of what had happened and why.
This is one of the ways I consider the Italianness important: From what I've seen, non-American directors have a much greater tendency to defy the genre conventions that we take for granted. Or maybe those are just the foreign films that most get our attention. The other way is that, well, Italy is rather beautiful as well as old, making it a fine match for Virgil's passions.
Looking around, I see that while IMDb gives TBO a generous rating, critics gave very mixed reviews. I want to err on the slightly positive side, appreciating the way it shakes me up. At the same time, I feel kinda betrayed, like I wasn't sold the product I thought. In that way, perhaps the director pulls the same trick on us as his characters pull on each other. "Everything can be faked" indeed.
If that's his game, then I may have just ruined it. I'm not sorry, because I put a higher priority on getting my audience to decide whether they want to be his.
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