Plenty of Bang for your bucks
HG Wells, who wrote The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, once said, ‘‘whenever I see an adult riding a bicycle, I have hope for the human race’’. I love the quote and mostly feel the same way myself.
But even Wells would have had to make an exception for the deeply unlovely James Figueras, first seen in Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy desultorily riding his stationary bike at the walls of his drab and cluttered apartment, while he rehearses the lecture he will deliver later in the day to a room of tourists at some Milanese art gallery.
Figueras is played by Claes Bang, who must have caused Clive Owen’s agent to have a very bad day indeed, early this year, when Bang first hoved into view as the titular Count in Netflix’s mostly very good Dracula.
Bang had a couple of decent entries on his CV already – 2017’s The Square
especially – before Dracula
made him an international breakout and, I figure, in the next few years, we will be seeing a lot more of him.
Here, Bang is basically perfect as the duplicitous, roguish and narcissisticall-the-way-down art critic Figueras, eking out a living on the lecture circuit, flogging his book, and writing well-regarded columns in some high-end magazines.
It’s enough to keep him in his apartment and petrol in the tank of his ageing Range Rover, but not nearly enough to give him authentic entry to the world of Champagnequaffing layabouts he occasionally is paid to amuse.
Then two things happen, fast. Figueras meets a woman whom he clearly likes immediately, even as he plays at being nonchalant.
And a seriously wealthy dealer offers him an opportunity to meet a very great, but notoriously reclusive artist.
Nobody has interviewed Jerome Debney (the initials are a clear tribute to the similarly private J D Salinger, I guess) in 50 years, and now Figueras will have a shot. But there is a condition: the dealer wants a Debney in his collection, even if it must be stolen by Figueras.
So the stage is set for a Ripleyish yarn of awful people behaving despicably while waving their martini stems about in the ultrarich playground of Italy’s Lake Como.
The Burnt Orange Heresy unfolds as a very nearly theatrical experience, with the action mostly confined to a few locations and the core cast of four.
But with Elizabeth Debicki
(Macbeth) as Figueras’ newly minted love, Mick Jagger – in his first film in almost 20 years – as the rapacious dealer, and Donald Sutherland, somehow toggling between avuncular and terrifying as Debney, director Capotondi has the right cast to put some wind under the wings of the talky and occasionally meandering script.
The men of the film are attracting all the kudos but, for me, it was Debicki who stole every scene, playing the predators against each other – perhaps – and yet keeping her own soul intact.
The Burnt Orange Heresy was a fine diversion on a grim and grey afternoon. It made me laugh, it held me in its twists, and it sent me home ready to find a copy of Charles Willeford’s 1971 novel.
The restraint and measured pace of the first two acts might not be for everyone, but the final third delivers all the murder and villainy the trailer is promising. The Burnt Orange Heresy (R13, 98 mins) Directed by Giuseppe Capotondi Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★