The Burnt Orange Heresy Reviews

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since a decent cast was involved, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, it has been a while since I came across such a weird and mysterious title. Concerning the movie itself, sure, it didn’t get much love when it was released but I thought it definitely had some potential though. What I enjoyed the most was the interesting ideas they developed about the relationship between Art, the artists and the art critics. Indeed, if you would believe this movie, art critics have above all an impact on the art business but, actually, not so much on Art itself and I would tend to agree with this assessment. On top of that, the four main characters were all intriguing and the cast was fine as well (Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, Mick Jagger, Donald Sutherland). Finally, it was visually pretty neat and I really enjoyed the mood created by Giuseppe Capotondi. Unfortunately, even if all the right ingredients seemed to be present, the damned thing still didn’t completely work though. Above all, I think it was too short and, as a result, they didn’t have enough time to properly flesh out the characters and the story. I mean, it was rather impressive how much Mick Jagger and Donald Sutherland managed to do when they only had a couple of scenes but it was rather bewildering that there was no scene involving the two characters. On the other hand, even if I won’t blame Elizabeth Debicki who did what she could with the material she was provided, her character turned out to be rather bland simply because there was just no time to do anything else with this woman after all. Concerning the story, well, it did result with some major plots. For example, how come that nobody thought it was odd that, the very same night that Jerome Debney’s studio burnt down, James Figueras and his girlfriend suddenly left the estate? Of course, you could argue that Joseph Cassidy (probably the most satisfying character played by a pitch-perfect Mick Jagger) foresaw that Figueras would do something terribly drastic to achieve his goal and, since it did align with his own objectives, he didn’t interfere. Finally, the ending during which Figueras needed not one but two attempts to kill this poor girl did seem like a waste of running time which could have been spent on something else. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of it flaws, I have to admit that it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look.