‘The Christophers’ review: Steven Soderbergh’s witty chamber piece stars Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel

Dir: Steven Soderbergh. UK. 2025. 100mins

Steven Soderbergh’s third film in quick succession following Black Bag and Presence is the story of an artist on the edge of death. In chatty two-hander The Christophers, Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a sardonic art legend who meets his intellectual match in frank preservationist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel). In a test of wits and wills held mostly in a single-setting, Soderbergh pushes both characters to return to their former passions through philosophical conversations that reflect his own career.  

As a double act, McKellen and Coel are a charming pairing

The Christophers is certainly likely to draw attention following its Toronto premiere. It may feature a less glitzy cast than the Michael Fassbender/Cate Blanchett thriller Black Bag, but McKellen and Coel (I May Destroy You) are a strong draw, as is Soderbergh himself. Baby Reindeer star Jessica Gunning and former late-night host James Corden round out a cast of familiar, easily marketable names.

When siblings Barnaby (Corden) and Sallie (Gunning) contact Lori, she is working part-time at a food truck while awaiting clients for her art preservation business. But these greedy, estranged heirs to their father Julian’s legacy aren’t out to save his work. They want Lori to become his assistant, find the incomplete paintings to his famous Christopher series and complete them by her own hand in a bid to sell the finished portraits to the highest bidder. Though Lori isn’t a major fan of their dad – whose acerbic wit, we later learn, emotionally damaged her years ago – she takes the job for reasons that are never entirely clear. 

An artistic legend whose glory days were during the 1960s and ’70s, Julian doesn’t do much painting anymore. Instead he spends his day sending videos from his studio to eager fans. He’d rather forget the Christopher series, a collection of portraits of his former lover. So when Lori arrives to begin her job, he orders her to destroy them. In a kind of low-key heist, Lori forges shreddable copies that she’ll swap for the real deal. When that doesn’t work, Julian decides to burn them. Yet Lori immediately sees through his consternations and realises that he doesn’t actually want to get rid of the Christophers.   

The screenplay penned by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move) attempts to probe Lori and Julian’s shared insecurities. Both have mostly decided to segregate their creativity from the world. Lori paints but doesn’t show anyone her work; Julian no longer creates at all. And both use sarcasm to deflect real emotions. When Lori shares that her partner left her for a friend, Julian quips that, back in his day, a throuple was called infidelity (rather than being dressed up in a newfangled word). Lori, however, often volleys her most stinging rebukes in silence. When Julian rebels, she stands there with the expression of an unamused parent dealing with a toddler’s tantrum. As a double act, McKellen and Coel are a charming pairing, combining a classic wit and neo-soul cool to delightful results.       

You just wonder, however, if there’s more meat on this bone. Soderbergh doesn’t maximize the mostly single setting of Julian’s townhouse narratively or visually. Despite Soderbergh and DoP Peter Andrews opting for wide angle lenses, we actually see very little of Julian’s eccentric home. The backlighting that gave Black Bag its uncanny glow sometimes obscures Coel here. Complex aspects of the narrative, such as Lori’s traumatic past with Julian, are also too easily smoothed over, while Julian’s broad statements about art border on cliche. In that sense, once the punchlines fade, The Christophers only leaves glancing marks. 

Throughout, one wonders why Lori opts to stay. Though she sells her forging services, she’s not sticking around for the money. She isn’t particularly enamoured by the inchoate sketches of Julian’s incomplete series either. Nevertheless, she continues to return. It’s worth noting that Soderbergh also briefly retired over a decade ago, but returned with renewed vigor – which could suggest that he himself once identified with the disillusioned Lori and cinema, an aging artform, is the bruising love he can’t quit.