J Paul Johnson
Auction is a smart, savvy French drama full of surface-level style and flair, set in the tony art-as-commerce world of Parisian high-flyers, fawning brokers, and clever schemers. Thrust in perpetual motion by its quick-paced narrative and excellent ensemble of actors, writer-director Pascal Bonitzer’s film rarely disappoints and often surprises, especially with a conclusion that gives its characters their full and well-earned due. Out this week in North American theaters, Auction is well worth its bid for your time.
Bonitzer’s script is inspired by a 2005 discovery of a major work by the early-twentieth-century Expressionist artist Egon Schiele. His 1914 work, Wilted Sunflowers (Autumn Sun II), had last been seen in public in 1937 and thought forever disappeared, looted in the wake of the Nazi regime. But an anonymous Frenchman was found to have it in his possession—with no knowledge at all of its importance. Though most assumed the discovery to be one of the fakes so common to the art world, it proved to be genuine—and worth millions.
Auction does not present these events as fact but uses them liberally as its narrative’s inciting incident, setting into motion a plot involving a complex set of characters with strongly competing motivations. The Schiele in question is found in the apartment of a young and common night-shift laborer, Martin (Arcadi Radeff), who has no idea of its value or history and surprisingly little interest in the wealth it might bring. The Schiele was hanging on his bedroom wall when he and his mother took occupancy and neither of them thought to question its origins.
When star auctioneer André (Alex Lutz) learns that this suspected Schiele painting is hanging in some small-town worker’s flat, he is of course suspicious but intrigued. André and his ex-wife and still-colleague Bertina (Léa Drucker) travel to Mulhouse, in Alsace, to see what they both assume will be a copy or a fake. But when they lay eyes on the work, they burst out in spontaneous laughter. It’s their unbridled response at seeing a very real treasure appear before their eyes, and soon its authenticity is verified.
But the art world is full of players, and the race to settle its value and rightful ownership ensues. There are, among them, not only André and Bertina but also André’s ambitious intern Aurore (Louise Chevillotte), a novice to the art world but a veteran of schemes. The Schiele’s last rightful owner has heirs stateside, and they too want a cut, as do Andre’s bosses and co-workers. All of them and more intersect and interact in surprising if perfectly motivated and often quite funny and even insightful ways.
Bonitzer—a former Cahiers du Cinéma critic and screenwriter for André Téchiné, Jacques Rivette, Raoul Peck, and others—here takes what is I assume for many viewers as it was for me a foreign world, that of the high-stakes big-money art market, and uses it primarily as backdrop for genuinely human characters whose values and morals intersect. Sure, there is some necessary skewering of the industry, but such is secondary to Auction’s more human drama.
It is perhaps the least likely of a narrative full of power players and schemers who ultimately makes the most impression. It would be easy for Bonitzer to overlook the young night-shift laborer who found the Schiele in the first place: after all, most of Auction‘s narrative revolves around those scheming for a piece of the juicy pie it represents. But Arcadi Radeff’s Martin remains steadfast throughout. Though at first his character seems at most incidental to Auction’s shenanigans, he proves to be the film’s moral center. A young man who does not want the kinds of troubles riches can bring, he stands in stark contrast to the other movers, shakers, and schemers around him.
As a North American reviewer with an interest in and appreciation for French cinema but little direct knowledge of either the country’s culture or its sociology, I’m sure that there is even more to Auction that I might be missing. Bonitzer’s characters are constantly jockeying for standing, using age, ethnicity, origin, class, and manner to claim power. The director’s own astute eye for characters prone to such plays reminds me a little of Jean Renoir’s La Regle de Jeu (Rules of the Game) in Auction‘s mix of pithy comments, farcical comedy, and genuine insight into the human condition. All told, that’s as high a compliment as I can pay.
