Lindsey Lowson / 25 May 2025 / Categories: Movie and TV Shows, Movie

Art Thriller The Best Offer in Italy also goes by Deception in The UK

Storms into top 25 movies of all time

OMG what a movie. I am not sure which flick I am demoting but this film storms into my top 25 films of all time from acclaimed director of Cinema Paradiso Giuseppe Tornatore's a coming of age film you must watch if you haven’t seen it. (Subtitles but fantastic)

The best offer or Deception 2013 stars the brilliant Geoffrey Rush (The King Speech) and the acting throughout is magnificent. What a love story. A film that explores every human emotion against a backdrop of the exquisite beauty, art history, stunning sets and cinematography. A simple feast of creativity and understanding that takes us on a journey around the world through the work of highly celebrated and esteemed loner, Virgil Oldham an art expert, auctioneer and valuer of the highest talent and regard.

Rush supported by his friend/sidekick Billy an artist never recognised for his talent played by Donald Sutherland and Robert a young lethario who is credited with the ability to fix anything who the ladies adore, traverses his life as an insular misfit closed off to the world, taking solace in his lifetime collection of the most beautiful women painted by the great masters throughout history not always acquired by the most legislate of means.

I am not going to tell you what happens, you have to watch and then watch again, which I will be doing to catch all the nuance in the dialogue to follow a complex plot that will truly keep you gripped until the very end.

When I read other reviews before watching, no one described the film with the passion that came through for me. Why you cannot always trust what people stay, we all like different things and this one slipped under the radar for me.

For anyone interested in old things; the movie is overflowing with exquisite sets and artefacts that create the backdrop for a life lived to the full and then yet surprisingly not at all.

Is it sad? Some may find it so but I found it uplifting and I extremely clever. Very real which for me made it extremely thought provoking and enigmatic.

The script is extremely layered and clever, like ai said a must watch and then a must watch again.

I don’t want to tell you too much as it’s so original using the parallels of authenticity in human emotion to art and where the lines blur for the forgers of the masters and how beauty and value exists for over time even in a fake.

The movie has the power to change the way we look at the human experience and Love of art, beauty, people and the fragility and frailty found there hits to the very core of us all.

Superb acting from Geoffrey Rush goes without saying.

I am so happy I got to watch this film. The very best movie I’ve seen in quite sometime.