A PORTRAIT OF COLLECTORS WHO GIVE ME THE CREEPS
My Rembrandt (in cinemas, Amazon, 12A)
Verdict: Rather stiff Old Masters documentary
Daddy Issues (Amazon, iTunes; 15)
Verdict: So-so rom-com
IN THIS time of no touching and closed galleries, the feature documentary My Rembrandt brings us enticingly close to every brushstroke in the Dutch Old Master’s magnificent works. We see Rembrandt van Rijn’s paintings through the eyes of besotted collectors, aristocrats, museums and art dealers. The documentary opens with the Duke of Buccleuch in Dumfriesshire professing his love for Old Woman Reading, painted in 1655, and hanging far too high above his fireplace. He decides to dedicate a room to the work (his castle is not short of rooms) and like a delighted child he clutches the canvas once touched by Rembrandt. In Amsterdam, art dealer Jan Six tries to prove an anonymous painting he snapped up at Christie’s because it ‘gave him a funny feeling’ is in fact a lost Rembrandt. Meanwhile, down at the city’s Rijksmuseum, a battle has begun with the Louvre in Paris to gain possession of a pair of full-length portraits of a Dutch merchant and his wife. The asking price is a gobsmacking ¤160 million (£145 million). The weirdest Rembrandt obsessive of them all is American billionaire Thomas Kaplan, who bought Woman With A White Cap and admitted ‘I kissed her on the lips’ when he got the painting home. Not very good curatorial practice. But it exemplifies the whiff of superiority and privilege in these men’s intimate relations with the paintings, which is, alas, never challenged in the film.
DADDY ISSUES is a rom-com which seems as dated as Bridget Jones, with a self-deprecating, scatty lead, Henri (Kimberley Datnow), who has a knack for meeting Mr Wrong. Henri is an aspiring stand-up comedian in London with daddy issues — her divorced father lives in America and thinks comedy is a ‘hobby’. When he dies suddenly, he leaves her his Los Angeles mansion with a pool and a handsome lodger, Nolan (Tanner Rittenhouse). You can guess where this is going. Henri’s friend Alice (Alice Carroll Johnson) also has issues, working as an escort for Hollywood sugar daddies. The film clunkily intercuts the two friends’ attempts to please their fathers, dead and alive, in a bland, entirely white world. The most exciting moment is the destruction of some pink plastic lawn flamingos.