Everybody Loves A Con-Except When They Are The Conned-When At First You Practice To Deceive, Part II-Giuseppe Tonatore’s “The Best Offer” (2013)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

The Best Offer, starring Geoffrey Rush, Donald Sutherland, Jim Sturgess, Sylvia Hoeks, directed by Giuseppe Tonatorem 2013

Greg Green who has been the site manager of the on-line edition of this publication since 2017 has as part of his new regime, as a part of a policy that he had initiated when he was chief editor at American Film Gazette for many years encouraged his writers to let the reader into some of the internal workings of on-line publication. I have taken him up on that proposition as a matter of completeness since I believe that this review of 2013’s The Best Offer is in kindred spirit to another recently reviewed film in this space, 1991’s Deceived.  In that review I mentioned, based on my own personal experience, that every woman stands in unfocused fear and trepidation that the man she starts a serious relationship is for real, is not a con artist, a holy goof psycho con artist in that film and just an ordinary one in my case. Then this film came along which under ordinary circumstances would go to Seth Garth but which Greg switched up after seeing what I had written about in Deceived. (Seth the obvious choice because he has been the one over the years who has used the expression “everybody loves a con except the one being conned” the most and done a number of reviews where the con was central to the action of the film like in The Sting back in the 1970s.)

What intrigued Greg about my prior review was that I took a very strong stand that this idea related especially to women and wondered how I would deal with a case where as in The Best Offer a man was the subject of the con, a non-psycho con but a con nevertheless. (Greg apparently missed my note that men could tell their own takes on this proposition, but I was dealing with women.) Here is how the con worked, a beautiful con according to Sam Lowell who watched it with me and saw where the thing was heading long before I caught on to the “grift” (a Sam expression from corner boy days as a youth so he says). Virgil Oldman, played by sad-faced Geoffrey Rush, was a high -end top auctioneer for a major auction house who also had via his companion in crime, Billy played by now ancient Donald Sutherland, accumulated a gallery full of the best the art world had to offer in female portraits going back to at least the Renaissance. Their own scam was to downgrade the artist who painted the thing and grab a masterpiece for cheap money. Nice.

This accumulation of female portraits locked away from prying eyes and who knows what else had much to do with Virgil’s finicky ways and fear of women. That fear, subtly using that unspecified origin fear  is what sets the whole con up once he got a strange commission to auction off a valuable villa full of high-end paintings and fine furniture. The strange commission from a young woman who allegedly suffered from agoraphobia in the extreme as she led him on a merry chase before they finally met. The key here is Virgil’s kinship with a fellow odd-ball, a fellow person uncomfortable with dealing with people. Her turning out to be drop-dead beautiful was an add-on although the homely as sin Virgil should have at least had a few defenses up. In any case he got lured in little by little helped by the machinations of a master tinkerer, Robert, played by Jim Sturgess, who also was giving lovelorn Virgil advise on how to woe this young woman who has sparked his interest. Finally Virgil woos the young woman, Claire, played by fetching and fragile Sylvia Hoeks, who blossomed under his tutelage. A number of incidents, including a brutal street robbery by thugs near the villa bring Claire out into the world. Virgil will take his credits for her resurrection, including a few romps in the hay. And she will not object.                

Once Virgil felt that Claire felt comfortable in his high-end digs after bringing her along from her cocoon and a few nights of high-end love-making he brought her into his inner sanctum-the room full of female portraits which had previously sustained him. From there it was all downhill as Virgil decided to retire and devote himself to Claire and her well-being. One day he came home to put another painting in his collection room. Bingo-no paintings except one that Billy painted, you remember Billy who helped Virgil with their own con scheme. A painting allegedly of Claire’s mother which was in her possession as she and Virgil were going round and round. Shocked, Virgil finally realized that he has been set up by a cabal led by Billy assisted by Robert and Claire and a few incidental characters. That sends him to a mental institution and later to Prague where he foolishly expected the perfidious Claire to show up since she expressed an interest in a certain place in that town. A beautiful con according to Sam but to me just an extension of my idea about every woman that now applies to every man-he must have a deep-seeded dread that the woman he is dealing with is not real, is a con artist-or worse.