‘The Christophers’ review: Steven Soderbergh’s witty chamber piece stars Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel

Dir: Steven Soderbergh. UK. 2025. 100mins

Steven Soderbergh’s third movie in fast succession following Black Bag and Presence is the story of an artist on the sting of dying. In chatty two-hander The Christophers, Ian McKellen performs Julian Sklar, a sardonic artwork legend who meets his mental match in frank preservationist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel). In a check of wits and wills held principally in a single-setting, Soderbergh pushes each characters to return to their former passions by means of philosophical conversations that replicate his personal profession.  

As a double act, McKellen and Coel are an enthralling pairing

The Christophers is actually probably to attract consideration following its Toronto premiere. It could characteristic a much less glitzy forged than the Michael Fassbender/Cate Blanchett thriller Black Bag, however McKellen and Coel (I Could Destroy You) are a robust draw, as is Soderbergh himself. Child Reindeer star Jessica Gunning and former late-night host James Corden spherical out a forged of acquainted, simply marketable names.

When siblings Barnaby (Corden) and Sallie (Gunning) contact Lori, she is working part-time at a meals truck whereas awaiting purchasers for her artwork preservation enterprise. However these grasping, estranged heirs to their father Julian’s legacy aren’t out to avoid wasting his work. They need Lori to change into his assistant, discover the unfinished work to his well-known Christopher sequence and full them by her personal hand in a bid to promote the completed portraits to the best bidder. Although Lori isn’t a serious fan of their dad – whose acerbic wit, we later be taught, emotionally broken her years in the past – she takes the job for causes which might be by no means completely clear. 

An inventive legend whose glory days have been through the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, Julian doesn’t do a lot portray anymore. As a substitute he spends his day sending movies from his studio to keen followers. He’d moderately overlook the Christopher sequence, a group of portraits of his former lover. So when Lori arrives to start her job, he orders her to destroy them. In a form of low-key heist, Lori forges shreddable copies that she’ll swap for the true deal. When that doesn’t work, Julian decides to burn them. But Lori instantly sees by means of his consternations and realises that he doesn’t really need to do away with the Christophers.   

The screenplay penned by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Transfer) makes an attempt to probe Lori and Julian’s shared insecurities. Each have principally determined to segregate their creativity from the world. Lori paints however doesn’t present anybody her work; Julian now not creates in any respect. And each use sarcasm to deflect actual feelings. When Lori shares that her companion left her for a pal, Julian quips that, again in his day, a throuple was referred to as infidelity (moderately than being dressed up in a newfangled phrase). Lori, nevertheless, usually volleys her most stinging rebukes in silence. When Julian rebels, she stands there with the expression of an unamused guardian coping with a toddler’s tantrum. As a double act, McKellen and Coel are an enthralling pairing, combining a traditional wit and neo-soul cool to pleasant outcomes.       

You simply marvel, nevertheless, if there’s extra meat on this bone. Soderbergh doesn’t maximize the principally single setting of Julian’s townhouse narratively or visually. Regardless of Soderbergh and DoP Peter Andrews choosing huge angle lenses, we really see little or no of Julian’s eccentric dwelling. The backlighting that gave Black Bag its uncanny glow generally obscures Coel right here. Complicated facets of the narrative, equivalent to Lori’s traumatic previous with Julian, are additionally too simply smoothed over, whereas Julian’s broad statements about artwork border on cliche. In that sense, as soon as the punchlines fade, The Christophers solely leaves glancing marks. 

All through, one wonders why Lori opts to remain. Although she sells her forging providers, she’s not sticking round for the cash. She isn’t notably enamoured by the inchoate sketches of Julian’s incomplete sequence both. Nonetheless, she continues to return. It’s price noting that Soderbergh additionally briefly retired over a decade in the past, however returned with renewed vigor – which might counsel that he himself as soon as recognized with the disillusioned Lori and cinema, an ageing artform, is the bruising love he can’t give up.