An intriguingly Hitchcockian premise gradually takes on a preposterous air in the art-world noir “The Best Offer.”
Geoffrey Rush’s performance borders on camp, but he’s highly entertaining as a persnickety art appraiser with a special gift for detecting antique forgeries. An unseen woman (Sylvia Hoeks) with a house full of objets d’art enlists his appraisal services but resists all face-to-face meetings. She turns out to be a severe agoraphobic who communicates with him only on the phone and through a wall behind which she hides. As the two strike up a friendship, in her house he finds the pieces of a fantastical machine that he begins to piece together with the aid of a master tinkerer (Jim Sturgess).
Directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), the film creates an appealingly uncompromising protagonist and a lush sense of suspense straight out of a 1940s film like “Suspicion” or “Rebecca.” But when secrets begin to be revealed, it’s considerably less satisfying, with a central relationship that defies belief and a lackluster final development that creates more questions than answers.