The Best Offer explores strangeness and deceit in the art world

award-winning Cinema Paradiso (1988), the director-writer's The Best Offer is an examination of the ways that people's lives, emotions and the choices they make define who they are, what they do and what they can be made to do. The movie centres on a renowned art expert and auctioneer who leads a life of professional devotion and behavioural rigidity.

Virgil Oldman (made effortlessly watchable by Geoffrey Rush) finds, assesses, catalogues and auctions fine art and furniture. His acumen, experience, and professionalism have made him rich and, within his own world, famous. His success allows him to live a life of respect, seclusion and control.

His ethical standards are not, however, unfailingly pristine. Through a partnership with Billy Whistler (Donald Sutherland), Oldman has deceitfully acquired a large collection of paintings which he auctions, declaring originals forgeries, and having Whistler "win" them at Oldman's auctions.

The art expert treats his clients, and seemingly everyone else on earth, with naked contempt and derision, and only shows a touch of kindness and decency to Whistler.

One day, a strange phone call from an equally strange woman creates a tiny crack in Oldman's stringent facade. Claire Ibbetson (Sylvia Hoeks) is a reclusive heiress who would like to liquidate a large amount of her recently deceased parents' belongings.

She demands that Oldman indulge her eccentricities, which clashes with his own need for attention, and his initial response is outrage and indignation. At first, he refuses to speak to Claire, much less pander to her need for control. But soon enough, his interest gets the better of him, and he becomes intrigued by the increasingly bizarre tales she tells him over the telephone.