Movie Review: The Burnt Orange Heresy

The Burnt Orange Heresy ** ½ / *****
Directed by: Giuseppe Capotondi.
Written by: Scott B. Smith based on the novel by Charles Willeford.
Starring: Elizabeth Debicki (Berenice Hollis), Claes Bang (James Figueras), Donald Sutherland (Jerome Debney), Mick Jagger (Joseph Cassidy).

Elizabeth Debicki has certainly become one of the best working actresses around. She should have least been nominated for her excellent performances in Steve McQueen’s Widows, she’s excellent in pure movie star mode in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet – and has delivered any number of interesting performances in other movies as well. She is even good in this film, The Burnt Orange Heresy, which overall isn’t a particularly good film – but she, along with Donald Sutherland, elevate a rather silly art world thriller. Perhaps a director like Hitchcock could have made this film work – but even then, it would be full of pseudo-intellectual posturing about art and its meaning, so maybe not.

The film stars Claes Bang as James – an art critic, who was once a rising star in the field, who everyone assumed would be running his own prestigious gallery by this point – but he’s screwed up, and so now he writes books, and delivers lectures to old people on the meaning of art that he doesn’t much believe in. He meets Debicki’s Berenice at one of those lectures – the pair fall into bed almost immediately, and soon are a couple. James is approached by Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) – a big time art dealer, with an offer. The legendary artist Jerome Debney (Sutherland) is willing to sit down for an interview with James. All of Debney’s work was apparently burned in a gallery fire decades ago, and he hasn’t released anything since – although according to Cassidy, he has never stopped working. What Cassidy wants is for James to steal one of Debney’s newer works. It will make a fortune for Cassidy – who in turn will do a solid for James – and get him that gallery he always wanted. Things, of course, don’t go as planned – and James starts to distrust everyone around him – not without reason.

There is certainly enough crackling chemistry between Bang and Debicki in the opening act that make you wish the pair were starring in a film like Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, or either version of The Thomas Crown Affair – films that I’m sure the Netflix algorithm will suggest if you watch this one. All of those films are light and fluffy – they don’t have much serious on their mind, and had The Burnt Orange Heresy continued in that vein throughout, it undoubtedly would have a been a fun little film. This is especially true once the third major character – that legendary artist played with a twinkle of mischief in his eye by Sutherland shows up.

But somewhere along the way, the film turns rather dark and self-serious – with a lot of questions about art, including questions about an artist who supposedly worked during their time in a Concentration Camp, and a lot of heavy symbolism about dead flies. The film takes some dark twists and turns – as I suppose it must – in the final act involving murder and guilt.

The film, it must be said, is beautiful to look at. Not only does the camera get to take in the beauty of Bang and Debicki, but it’s shot in Lake Como in Italy, so director Giuseppe Capotondi doesn’t have to do much to make it all look pretty. Unfortunately, he really doesn’t do all that much else. The movie is all about its surface pleasures – with Bang, Debicki and Sutherland having fun throughout – even trying to keep things light as the film turns dark. Perhaps Bang got cast here because of his international breakthrough The Square – as once again, he’s playing an art world figure in over his head, although otherwise, the films have nothing in common. Still, he’s in fine form – as is everyone else save for Mick Jagger, who seems to have forgotten how to act over the years.

In the end, The Burnt Orange Heresy is never boring, and further proof – not that any was needed – of the tremendous charm of Bang and Debicki – and still further proof that Sutherland is just as talented as always (it’s still shocking to me that the now 85-year-old Sutherland has never even been nominated for an Oscar – or received a Lifetime Achievement award). It does kind of feel though that the filmmakers didn’t know what was working about the film when they made it.