Canada: Friday, August 07, 2020
Sony Pictures Classics
for some sexual content/nudity, language, drug use and violence
http://www.sonyclassics.com/film/theburntorangeheresy
THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY follows charming and ambitious art critic James Figueras (Claes Bang), who has fallen from grace. He spends his days in Milan lecturing witless tourists about art history. His only glimmer of hope is a new-found love interest, the enigmatic American, Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki). An opportunity strikes when he is contacted by wealthy art dealer Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) who summons James to his villa on Lake Como and asks him to steal a painting from the legendary reclusive artist, Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland). Soon, James' greed and ambition get the better of him, and he finds himself caught in a web of his own making.
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Gregory M. - Rated it 3 out of 5
"The Burnt Orange Heresy" Charming and ambitious art critic, James Figueras (Claes Bang), has fallen from grace. He spends his days in Milan lecturing witless tourists about art history. His only glimmer of hope is a new-found love interest, the enigmatic American, Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki). An opportunity strikes when he's contacted by wealthy art dealer Joseph Cassidy (**** Jagger) who summons James to his villa on 'Lake Como' and asks him to steal a painting from the legendary reclusive artist, Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland). Soon, James greed and ambition get the better of him, and he finds himself caught in a web of his own making. This seductive, cerebral neo-noir starts with a reckless attraction. Two strangers adrift in present-day Italy, both outwardly cavalier but hiding wounds from compromised pasts, entwine at just about first sight. James Figueras needs a hit. Long on charm but currently short on life’s more bankable currencies, the darkly handsome art critic treads water at his profession’s margins in Milan, fueling a shaky search for career redemption with hits of a pharmaceutical nature. Ethereal young beauty Berenice Hollis, meanwhile, seems preternaturally self-possessed when she wanders late into one of James cleverly self-aggrandizing lectures. Whatever her motives, she's a breed apart from every other American tourist trapped under the spell of this well-rehearsed routine; more intrigued with what she sees than with what's said and armed with formidable charms of her own. Just when their electric liaison appears over, James surprises Berenice with an offer to extend. He's driving to the country for a weekend getaway. Moneyed art world power-player Joseph Cassidy has summoned the eager critic to his palatial 'Lake Como' villa. Along with some world-class pampering, the invitation portends employment. Figueras assumes his scholarly services are wanted. But Cassidy has other ideas. With a 'Machiavellian' élan, their host reveals another guest next door, the ultimate get across his art world lane and James. No living painter has been less accessible and consequently more coveted than Jerome Debney. Debney is a painter of purity and truth. Beyond his artistic skills, this sage but confounding J.D. Salinger (Fabio Melchionna) of the canvas has assumed mythic status due to a storied reclusion following the devastating loss of his life’s work to a fire. Now, precisely because no one owns a Debney, Cassidy must have one. If negotiating a successful acquisition requires some 'Faustian' deal points, well; even better. Helpfully, Cassidy knows more about Figueras curriculum vitae than can be found in his book, 'The Power Of The Critic'. Amused but largely immune to all the calculated moves around him, Debney avoids his influential patron. When at last the aging artist deigns to emerge and engage with James, he ends up truly taken with Berenice. In her, Debney sees something rare, precious, maybe even vulnerable. At the same time, James field of vision narrows as paranoia and other pressures close in. With unfettered ambition running wild in a realm where power flows so completely from perception, how much will they all pay for the truth? At the film’s start, beautiful music draws us slowly down a dark hallway. But then the record skips, breaking the reverie. Angelic voices are not the muses guiding us to enlightenment. They’re just a piece of vinyl malfunctioning inside James Figueras cluttered apartment. From there, we enter a world where nothing is quite as it seems on the surface. 'Art would not exist without criticism', James declares in his bravura opening monologue, making the case that his value and power as a critic rivals if not supersedes that of the artist he never became. By contrasting home rehearsals with his speaking engagement performance, the intercutting in the masterful sequence reveals much about James and the slickly-studied nature of his deceptions. Beyond the need to sway his audience, perhaps he also needs to convince himself that the truth is subject to creative revision since his own truth is presently so unacceptable. Either way, James puts the provocative thesis across with winning appeal. He's neither an indefatigable hero nor mythic monster. The challenge of this role is about credibly portraying the extreme but still all-too-human derelictions and delusions of a man whose toxic ambition has him disintegrating from within. He’s got this sort of insane vanity to restore his name now that he’s fallen out of favor. Berenice Hollis is pretending at the beginning to be a woman of the world, and then we soon realize that she’s not. It’s a very complicated character. She’s a very observant and wise soul. Running from a love affair that went badly awry in her small Minnesota town, Berenice is quite lost and bereft still. She's out looking for a way to shed that skin and to come back into herself. She's challenging herself, pushing herself to be brave. But ultimately her journey in this story is so much about circling back to who she really is. Berenice, for her part, takes a gamble on this tall, sexy foreign man, who comes from this art world she doesn’t know much about. Her eyes are open, but the trusting side of her better nature leads her astray. The dance that plays out between the two is something to behold. Viewers may not completely share James paranoia, but there's still an initial element of mystery as to whether Berenice Hollis could be more femme fatale than innocent ingénue. Of course, 'Lake Como’s' spectacular landscape also didn’t exactly hurt when it came to illustrating how Joseph Cassidy is a man of wealth and taste, so to speak. The film is a contemporary tale of art and artifice based on Scott B. Smith’s inspired adaptation of Charles Willeford’s novel by the same name. 'The Burnt Orange Heresy' was first published in 1971 and likewise set in Willeford’s home state of Florida. The setting shifts from 1970’s Florida to contemporary 'Lake Como', which is the cradle of 'Western' art. It’s nearly like 'The Hamptons Of Italy', but it’s not sunny. The fact that it’s so steep, it’s in between the mountains, you rarely get sunshine there. It gives the film this sort of melancholic, dark, eerie look. You’re sort of locked between the mountains and the water, so there's nowhere to go. Complex, richly-drawn characters. Provocative, haunting themes. The darkest shades of "Hitchcockian' suspense highlighted with dashes of 'European' grandeur and 'Hollywood' glamour reminiscent of the auteur’s classic 'To Catch A Thief', right down to dazzling dialogue and two gorgeous romantic leads. Just don’t expect a 'Hollywood' ending. "The Burnt Orange Heresy" feels nearly radical in this cultural moment, a taut, sexy thriller for grownups that skewers the relationship between power and the truth with conclusions that these days ring uncomfortably, well, true. There's now a stranger-in-a-strange-land dynamic that really resonated with the relationships and themes in the story. "The Burnt Orange Heresy is a very character-driven, sexy, noir-ish thriller. It’s a story of power, of abuse of power, of truth and lies, and how easy, really, it's to fabricate new truths and sell them as the real thing, A psychological thriller in the tradition of classic film noirs where seemingly reasonable people do very unreasonable things. written by Gregory Mann
