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Aldis (Eric Ladin) is a young painter who has the talent, style and passion to make it big, but lacks when it comes to selling himself. Enter Joanne (Betsy Randle), immensely rich art collector, who insists on buying one of his paintings at a gallery exhibition, even though it's already sold, but when she offers triple the asking price, she gets not only the painting but also Aldis' attention - and later over dinner, she offers him a studio at her large mansion and basically become his benefactor. Aldis lacks the funds to be pride enough to accept, and of course he also enjoys Joanne's admiration, so before long he moves his workplace to the mansion. And of course, he doesn't know that behind his back she meddles in his private life and cuts him off his girlfriend Lupe (Cinthya Carmona), he's just happy to have somewhere to paint, especially as two influential gallerists (Susan Anton, Endre Hules) have invited themselves to a studio tour in a month, and he wants to have something great to show. The arrangement works out great, the gallerists are duly impressed, and before long Aldis has his own show - and here's where cracks begin to show, as the gallerists don't want Joanne around the show so Aldis doesn't seem like a mere lackey of his benefactor and will be judged by his own talent rather who's financing him. Joanne is rather shattered by this, while Aldis learns from Lupe that it was Joanne who broke off their relationship - and suddenly there's a rift between him and Joanne. And then the reviews of the show come in, and he's almost unanimously called a mere copycat of Ryan West (Casey Deidrick), who incidently was his nemesis and bully at school who had never shown much interest in art back when but eventually found success before Aldis, painting in roughly the same style as he does. Aldis makes a getaway to a befriended artist (Chip Sickler) who has taken up residence in the woods in the middle of nowhere, while Joanne tries to think about ways to win Aldis back - and to that end eventually kidnaps Ryan West ...

This film could have gone two ways, neither of them good, either a pretentious mess trying to "say" things about the art world nobody has asked for, or a cookie cutter TV-friendly thriller that just uses the artworld as a backdrop to essentially tell the same story over again. Fortunately, Painter falls into neither category, as it tells its story in a poignant way, full of witty dialogue, traces of mystery when needed, carried by strong, often eccentric characters and equally strong performances, and a direction that apparently has an understanding for the arts but doesn't try to smother the audience with it, but that takes an artistic approach to storytelling, making this quite a fascinating movie.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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