In Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar-winning crossover hit Cinema Paradiso, an old film projectionist forms an unlikely friendship with a budding movie buff while bonding over the illicit frames of onscreen romance that had been censored and left on the cutting room floor by the Catholic Church.
And although he's never managed to duplicate its success, in Tornatore’s subsequent pictures the subjects may have changed but the themes established by Paradiso of lonely outsiders who are brought together as much out of appreciation for their eccentricities as they are by their (near voyeuristic) devotion to various artistic fields remain.
The eponymous Malena, for example was placed on a pedestal as though she were a bronze statue versus a flesh and blood human being by the young boys coming-of-sexual-age in that film. And in The Legend of 1900, Tim Roth’s grown man-child turned piano prodigy refuses to leave the only life he’s ever known aboard an ocean liner. Throughout his oeuvre, Tornatore’s characters are as liberated as they are imprisoned by their artistic obsessions.
Yet even though this idea has been touched on repeatedly in his filmography, he’s never combined that particular thematic double-edged sword with as much deliberate mystery as he does in his latest David di Donatello award-winning thriller The Best Offer.
And like the aforementioned double-edged sword that inevitably ensnares his characters, his latest film is intentionally filled with duplicitous duality from the double-meanings of lines and names that will reverberate later to the Paradiso like mentor/protégé centric set-up of its two main characters whom we discover are just one in a number of double-teaming sets of two that appear throughout the film.
A Hitchcockian take on David Fincher’s The Game as set in the world of art and antiquities where an item’s worth is established by the two part process of appraisal and auctioneering (as executed by Geoffrey Rush’s ethically questionable Virgil Oldman), The Best Offer has all of the unmistakable aesthetic and eccentric hallmarks of a Tornatore production.
And this is especially evident given the way Offer establishes the overwhelming sense of loneliness that haunts Virgil in the film’s earliest frames, which Tornatore builds off of as the work continues to create a pattern wherein – aside from a few scenes that are set at a pub, restaurant or the auction house – the screen is populated by one to three characters at most.
But going even further, the filmmaker ensures that even when Virgil shares the screen with a roomful of people (in scenes few and far between), the cinematographer’s lens is primarily fixated on only one to two individuals regardless in order to deepen the sense of voyeurism that pervades among the art-obsessed collectors and characters on and off the job.
A psychological thriller with Tornatore’s unique fingerprints on display from start to finish, The Best Offer is heightened by yet another incredible score from his frequent musical collaborator, legendary composer Ennio Morricone.
Once again serving up an idealized female that’s presented as an artistic stand-in and is therefore coveted (and allegorically appraised) much like a painting, this time Tornatore employs a much more knowing wink to the audience in a Gothic-tinged May/December romance than he utilized in the slightly exploitative Malena.
Admittedly if you’ve seen more than a handful of mysteries before then it’s fairly easy to see the inevitable twist coming at least 20 minutes into the 131 minute movie.
Nonetheless this puzzle is pieced together with such sophistication and intricate craftsmanship by Tornatore that it’s a delight to watch the picture we’re initially presented be deconstructed before we then go back and reconstruct it ourselves after the end credits roll as I found myself still thinking about the intricate assemblage of clues and layers the next day.
From the overly longwinded and joyless late segment that was famously removed by Harvey Weinstein in the (surprisingly superior) shorter, American cut of Cinema Paradiso and beyond, endings have never been Tornatore’s strong suit. And unfortunately, Offer suffers from the same curse as well in a strange juxtaposition of shots near the film’s close that reeks of a continuity error or reshot and quickly recut ending.
While it’s jarring enough to make you wonder if writer/director Tornatore had originally imagined a much darker fate for one of his lead characters (as one appears to age in reverse over an indiscriminate period of time and two very different locations), fortunately because he had displayed such a firm grasp on everything else up until that point, we’re able to shrug it off.
Righting itself before the final scene, the flawed montage is as easily overlooked as the realization that we saw the ultimate plot twist and character reveal coming right from the start.
The type of work where the less you know about it going in the better, at the same time, you'll find that the more you know about the filmography of Tornatore and the passions that seem to obsess the writer/director as well as his characters, the better able you’ll be to accept his latest mysterious Offer.
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The viewer quickly learns that Nick spent his entire childhood suffering because of the family’s grasp on his father, the beloved Dutch George. In fact, Dutch's devotion to the Darlings drove Nick’s perpetually ignored mother to abandon them and caused undeniable strain in his relationship with his father. And although he had to share his dad with every member of the Darlings and their capricious whims, Nick is drawn into the same arrangement for two irresistible reasons. The first consists of the fact that with all of their wealth, he’ll finally be able to make a positive change in his community, doing the type of pro bono and philanthropic work of which he’d always dreamed. But the second is far less saintly and much more sinister as after his father died in a plane crash under mysterious circumstances, Nick has decided to find out what happened to his father along with which (if any) Darling is responsible and make them pay
Perhaps the most scandalous plotline of the show surrounds an excellent William Baldwin as the attorney general and aspiring senator Patrick Darling, who on the surface has a picture perfect life and marriage, but hides a rather shocking secret in his ongoing relationship with the transgendered cosmetology student named Carmelita (a gorgeous Candis Cayne). While Carmelita is not only arguably the love of his life and indeed one of the show’s most morally sound characters, her very existence on the show is “socially groundbreaking” as Wright notes in a DVD featurette on the actress called The Other Woman: Candis Cayne. Instead of providing a role that could’ve easily been treated either for laughter’s sake or as a platform for an overbearing “message,” Wright chose to use the show “to remind” people that “there are all kinds of ways to be human,” but of course, Patrick’s traditional and extremely ambitious father Tripp Darling (Hollywood veteran Donald Sutherland) is determined to persuade his son to kick her to the curb. 
Providing the greatest and most reliable comic relief is Zea’s Karen, who harbors a flagrant crush on Nick with an undying passion to get back together with the married lawyer no matter what the cost. Whether it’s hitch-hiking a ride on the private family jet to crash an Italian trip with Nick and his wife or considering canceling her latest wedding, the discord between Karen and his wife Lisa strengthens throughout the season until at last Lisa must confront Karen. The only thing is, Darlings don’t play by the rules and they don’t take threats kindly.
While the sexually secure Karen flaunts her stuff, her younger sister and Jeremy’s sweet but Paris Hilton-like childish twin Juliet (Samaire Armstrong) battles insecurity over her latest acting performance to a rivalry with her old best friend Natalie Kimpton (Tamara Feldman) who had the audacity to steal her signature bangs. However, the rest of the Darlings have far greater matters at stake. 
And indeed, it’s the other Darling son, the Reverend Brian Darling (Glenn Fitzgerald) who is hiding an even greater secret that’s quickly revealed in the season’s earliest episodes as we learned that Brian — a family man much like Patrick — has illegitimately fathered a child. One of the sharpest written characters on the show and played to enviable perfection by Fitzgerald as arguably the most unlikable character (who must hide true emotion below bitterness at all times), I was fascinated to learn that Minnesota native Craig Wright, who holds a Master’s in Divinity, may be culling from his own background. Although he claims that all characters contain a bit of himself and on the DVD featurette shares that Nick’s relationship with the Darlings reminds him of his own relationship as a playwright with Hollywood, it’s Brian who other crew members say reflect the show’s creator the most. Yet this being a soap opera, of course, he’s far more prone to deceit than anyone could be in reality.
While one would assume that is all the drama one show could handle, more mysteries are revealed concerning the main premise of the pilot episode — namely, just what exactly happened to Nick’s father, Dutch. After learning about a large check written to an airplane mechanic who worked on the plane that killed his father, finding a briefcase filled with a huge file on the mysterious “techno-philanthropist” Simon Elder (Blair Underwood), and discovering that the Darling matriarch, Letitia (Jill Clayburgh) had had an affair with his father for more than forty years, Nick realizes that while he finds clues on a daily basis, what he really needs is answers. 
Yet there appears to be something in his easygoing charm and bravado that doesn’t quite sit right, nor do the confident smiles of Tripp or most of the Darling clan. But in a world where plenty of people are ready to do their dirty work and vaults are filled around the city with gold and jewels for whatever blackmail needs may come one’s way, just who is telling the truth and whom can Nick trust? While of course, this isn’t solved in the first season, some major revelations are revealed throughout and viewers held their breaths in anticipation from one episode to the next when promos like this hit the airwaves.
Additionally, it offers a second chance to get caught up with the brilliant writing and multi-faceted plot filled with secrets, deception, intrigue, romance, and comedy with ten jam-packed 
