Straining to seem chic and satirical, this is a slick, artificial swipe at the Brit art scene. Despite moving Danny Moynihan’s novel from Manhattan to London, this retains a US feel, as dealers Danny Huston and Stellan Skarsgård compete for Christopher Lee’s Mondrian and try to keep track of who’s screwing who.
The cast work hard, although some overdo it — unlike Gillian Anderson, highly amusing as the adulterous Skarsgård’s toyboy-hunting wife. Fatally, Duncan Wood fails to pull off the Altmanesque trick of interweaving multiple storylines. While this captures the tacky absurdity of the milieu, it does so with the broadest of brushstrokes.