The Stolen Painting review — a gripping comedy about Nazi-looted art

This satisfying French film follows a modern art appraiser whose career is jeopardised following the discovery of a long-lost Egon Schiele work.

Louise Chevillotte and Alex Lutz in The Stolen Painting.

The Stolen Painting (Le Tableau Vole)
91 minutes
French language with English subtitles
In cinemas from July 31

3½ stars

“To make it in this business you have to stop at nothing to make a sale,” high-profile artwork appraiser Andre Masson (an excellent Alex Lutz) tells new intern Aurore (Louise Chevillotte) in entertaining French drama The Stolen Painting.

He continues that, working for a leading Parisian art auction house, they need to be “99 per cent Indiana Jones and 1 per cent whore”. She says she’s happy to be a whore for him. He tells her it’s the 21st century and he was using a metaphor.

Even so, there is something a little unusual about handsome Andre and his beautiful intern. On the surface she is a compulsive liar and he’s a snob. We will learn there is more to each of them. This is a French film so there’s a good chance there will be romance somewhere along the line, and perhaps not where you might expect it to be.

The main story, though, is the discovery of a painting by Austrian expressionist artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918). It’s hanging on the wall of a home owned by a 30-year-old factory worker, Martin (Arcadi Radeff), in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse.

Andre and his ex-wife, Bettina (the terrific Lea Drucker), also an art appraiser, think the painting is a fake. However, they drive to Mulhouse, look at the artwork on a smoke-stained wall and decide otherwise. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,’’ Andre tells Martin.

Austrian artist Egon Schiele in a circa 1910 image.

However, the backstory to the painting complicates matters. It was stolen by the Nazis in 1939. The reason it survived – despite being the sort of modern art the Nazis burned – further complicates matters, as does the fact the art collector from whom it was stolen has relatives living in the US.

This film, written and directed by Pascal Bonitzer, draws on the historical Nazi looting of Schiele’s artworks. The painting, inspired by Vincent van Gogh, is called Sunflowers, which is close to Wilted Sunflowers, one of the real Schiele paintings that was nicked.

This exploration of Nazi art theft is lighter in tone than comparable movies such as The Monuments Men (2014), directed by and co-starring George Clooney, or Simon Curtis’s Woman in Gold (2015), starring Helen Mirren, but it still has its gripping moments, especially during the auction of Sunflowers.

It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. The post-auction sequence, in which the shy Martin is welcomed by people he’d not otherwise meet in his lifetime, is proof of that. It is a beautiful moment.

I don’t know a lot about art but I’m interested in films and books that interrogate the intricacies and personalities of this world, and this film more than satisfies that interest. With books in mind I recommend Alex Miller’s most recent novel, The Deal.

In Miller’s book, as in this film, it’s a world where everyone bends the truth to suit their needs and in which the marketplace value of a painting is determined by more than its artistic merits.