Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, The Christophers, is a sly, melancholy black comedy about art, ego and the strange issue of legacy. Written by Ed Solomon and starring Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, Jessica Gunning, and James Corden, the film balances acidic humour with genuine tenderness.
At its centre is Julian Sklar (McKellen), an ageing London painter whose glory days are long behind him. Once celebrated for a provocative series of portraits known as “The Christophers”, Julian now survives on dwindling prestige, eccentric routines, and recording Cameo videos for fans for small sums of money. His opportunistic children hatch a plan to profit from unfinished paintings hidden away in his attic, hiring struggling artist Lori Butler (Coel) to secretly complete the works before Julian dies.
What begins as an act of deception gradually becomes something far more complicated as Lori and Julian develop an uneasy but sincere connection built on artistic respect, resentment, and mutual recognition. Without ever tipping into sentimentality, the film explores questions of authorship, artistic decay, and whether unfinished work can ever truly belong to anyone else. Soderbergh keeps the tone nimble throughout, shifting between biting satire and surprisingly moving character drama without losing control of either.
McKellen gives one of his richest performances in years. Julian could easily have become a caricature of a monstrous ageing genius, but McKellen makes him funny, vain, cruel, frightened and oddly touching all at once. There are unmistakable echoes of Lucian Freud in the character’s late-career mythology: the cluttered studio, the obsessive portraiture, the reputation curdling into self-parody, and the uncomfortable dependence on younger admirers and assistants. Yet McKellen never plays Julian as a mere stand-in for the famous artist.Instead, he becomes a man painfully aware that his legend may now be more valuable than his actual art.
Michaela Coel is equally impressive. Lori’s intelligence and frustration simmer beneath every interaction, and Coel gives the character enormous emotional precision without overplaying any moment. Her chemistry with McKellen is what makes the film work; their scenes feel alive with challenge, irritation, and reluctant affection. The two actors understand that the film’s real subject is not forgery or inheritance, but artistic recognition.
The screenplay’s greatest strength is its simplicity. Screenwriter Ed Solomon avoids overcomplicating the premise with twists or heavy exposition. The dialogue is sharp, concise, and often very funny, but the script knows exactly when to step back and let awkward silences or small gestures carry meaning.
Even James Corden and Jessica Gunning, playing Julian’s grasping children, avoid becoming one-note villains. Their desperation feels recognisably human, which adds another layer to the film’s uneasy morality. Nobody in The Christophers is entirely innocent, but neither are they beyond understanding.
Soderbergh directs with deceptive looseness, allowing scenes to breathe while quietly building emotional weight beneath the jokes and barbs. By the final scenes, he has crafted something unexpectedly warm beneath the cynicism: a film about the fear of artistic irrelevance and the fragile hope that creation might still matter at the end.
