Critic Reviews

Screenwriter/director Tornatore is best known for his nostalgic "Cinema Paradiso," which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1990. But The Best Offer is completely different in style and tone; it’s dark instead of light, a psychological thriller of sorts, only with Virgil’s heart and orderly life in peril instead of his life.

Between its erotic underpinnings and increasingly preposterous third-act reveals, the film could easily pass for middle-grade Hitchcock. Since its premise is that forgeries can still have value, that’s a high compliment.

Part of the pleasure in watching The Best Offer is the elegant, unassumingly suspenseful way it unfolds. You never quite know where it’s all headed, in part because it never quite tells you what kind of movie it is. I called it a “romantic thriller,” but there’s a lot more movie here than that.

The film has several smart twists and surprises up its well-tailored sleeve.

Rush has a lot of fun with Oldman’s gradual thaw, and the questions the movie raises about authenticity and deception, while not remotely in the same heady league as those in "Certified Copy," nonetheless allow it to conclude on a satisfyingly ambiguous note.

An intriguingly Hitchcockian premise gradually takes on a preposterous air in the art-world noir The Best Offer.

Tornatore’s ideas about art, trust and intimacy are curious, even if they do not quite click.

Though it begs for a little lightening up, a moment of irony, a wink at the audience, this dead-serious fairy tale about a mysterious young woman (and a phantom automaton straight out of Hugo) is worth watching for Geoffrey Rush’s sensitive, never pandering performance.

Vertigo this ain’t, but there’s some quasi-Gothic charm in the baroque premise and eccentric marginal details, including a mathematically gifted dwarf.

Rush gives everything he has and manages to make Oldman (such an obvious name) into more than an automaton. Not so Sylvia Hoeks, who struggles to make Claire any more alluring than oil dripped on canvas.