Woman In Gold
Cert: 12A Time: 1hr 49mins
Thank goodness Woman In Gold has such a powerful and dramatic story at its heart, because it is this true story, of a historical injustice, that allows us to overlook such stumbles along the way as the fact that for most of the opening hour Helen Mirren is quietly upstaged by, er, Ryan Reynolds. Yes, the star of such classics as Van Wilder: Party Liaison is definitely having one of his better days.
To be fair, Mirren does get there in the end but only after the most awkward of extended openings, when the combination of a heavy Austrian accent, some clichéd dialogue and one or two strange attempts at comedy get it off to an uncomfortable start. Wander in a couple of minutes late and you’d have every reason for doubting whether this really was the immensely moving story of the Jewish family whose collection of paintings were stolen by the Nazis and then kept by the Austrian government. But stick with it: it does get better.
Mirren plays Maria Altmann, whom we meet at the funeral of her sister in Los Angeles in 1998. Her accent makes it clear she is not a native, while the inter-cutting of flashbacks to pre-war Vienna and a contemporary conversation she’s having with an old friend quickly get to the heart of the matter. Her family once owned several paintings by Gustav Klimt – including the instantly recognisable one of her aunt, Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I – which were seized by the Nazis after the Anschluss and never returned.
Now, 60 years later, she’d like them back, understandably given that the Adele gold-leafed portrait alone is valued at more than $100 m. Might her friend know of a lawyer who might help her? As it happens, she does – her son, Randy (Reynolds), who is unhappily between jobs. And so an unlikely Austro-American partnership is formed.
Their first meeting encapsulates everything that is awkward about the film’s opening. This is the second film running in which Mirren has employed an accent (she adopted a French one for The Hundred-Foot Journey) and while there’s nothing wrong with her Austrian one here, it is a distraction, a constant reminder that we’re watching Mirren rather than the character she is playing.
Meanwhile, that character seems to be living up to every Germanic stereotype possible. She upbraids Randy for being late, doesn’t laugh at his jokes and then commands him to try her strudel. At this point, two things already seem clear – that Reynolds is turning in the better performance and that, nevertheless, we could be in for a long 100-plus minutes. The last film made by director Simon Curtis was My Week With Marilyn, and for a while it seems he is either having trouble trading a lightweight comedy-drama for something more serious, or that his considerable TV experience is getting in the way of making a heavyweight feature
In the flashbacks to wartime Vienna, Curtis gets everything right and draws convincing performances from the cast