Woman In Gold

Here’s another theory you can totally disregard. Big actors star in small films as an audition for bigger films in that vein. For example, would Christian Bale have gotten Batman Begins if not for Equilibrium? Would Daniel Craig be playing 007 if not for XXXX? Ryan Reynolds knows that his funny man shtick has a time limit and will one day move into more serious territory and so stars in this little drama. Just a theory.

Based on a true story, Helen Mirren plays Maria Altmann, an LA clothes shop owner from well-to-do Austrian Jewish family who fled Vienna in the late thirties as the Nazis annexed the country. Her family owned priceless art, like the titular Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Blocher-Bauer, the subject of which being Maria’s aunt, now in the possession of the Austrian government and hanging in the State Gallery. Maria approaches ambitious lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Reynolds) asking for help in suing the Austrian government…

The story is dull. The idea of someone suing a government for a painting doesn’t bring to mind a visual story and to their credit director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) and writer Alexi Kayle Campbell seem to know this. But their attempt to inject some tension doesn’t come off. The narrative is littered with lengthy flashbacks to Maria’s youth (where she’s played by Tatiana Maslany), her marriage to an opera singer (Max Irons), the Anschluss and the couple’s flight from Vienna. Because Maria has to come to terms with her past and embraced the country of her youth (she even refuses to speak German), she must put her hatred to one side. That’s her arc. But these flashbacks are a distraction.

Characters are either inconsistent or underwritten. Maria in the beginning is hell-bent on getting the painting back, but later shrugs off the dream, before changing her mind again. Meanwhile, Randy’s lack of appreciation for the past (we’re guessing history in general) is brought up just as he fully understands the trauma the Austrian Jews suffered. At one point he tells wife Katie Holmes that he initially took the case for the money but now it’s more than that – a soft, underwritten motive.

Holmes is surplus to requirements, there only to first doubt her husband throwing his lot in with this strange woman, before finally offering her support. Daniel Bruhl is an Austrian reporter we’re told. Elizabeth McGovern turns up for a scene as a judge, as does Jonathan Pryce. Charles Dance gets a pass because he’s playing Charles Dance again and that’s not old yet.

Mirren is watchable, channelling some of Maggie Smith’s sharp tongue and Reynolds can think this is a job done. Shorn of his usual charm, he’s quite bland here, and he probably knows it, but then this is just a teaser for future Serious Reynolds. Just a theory.