The trailer is finally out for the neo-noir film The Burnt Orange Heresy, which stars Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger as a wealthy and conniving art dealer named Joseph Cassidy. Directed by Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Capotondi, the movie also features Claes Bang as swindling art critic James Figueras and Elizabeth Debicki as his weekend fling, Berenice Hollis.
“What is this about?” asks the washed-up Milan art critic at one point, referring to an impromptu invitation to the sprawling Lake Como home of Cassidy.
“Redemption, embezzlement, and forgery,” Cassidy responds with a smile.
Jagger, with his slicked-back hair and crisp white suit, seems at ease in the role, which is his first major acting gig since his similarly dapper 2001 turn as an escort-agency boss in The Man from Elysian Fields.
The duplicitous Cassidy has a deal to offer the power-hungry Figueras: He’ll give the critic access to interview the legendarily reclusive artist Jerome Debney (played by Donald Sutherland) and jump-start his flagging career; in return, Figueras has to “procure” a painting by Debney for Cassidy.
Debney happens to live on the edge of Cassidy’s property in a creepy little house but there is a bit of a problem: Debney keeps his work under lock and key and no one has seen anything from him in five decades. The film starts to take dramatic twists and turns of a dark thriller as ambitious characters each emerge with their own secret motives.
The movie’s release comes amid a spike in art-world thrillers in recent years. This past fall, The Goldfinch, about a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hit theaters, while the satirical thriller Velvet Buzzsaw debuted just a few months earlier. And the film Red Notice, which stars Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson in an Interpol art heist caper, is in the works for 2021.
Although Jagger may look the part of a shady art dealer, he said in a recent interview that there’s very little of himself in the character. “I’m not really a collector. I throw things away,” Jagger said during the film’s premiere in Venice in September, according to Rolling Stone. “I buy things and then lose them. I’m a completely hopeless collector. I’m the complete opposite.”
The film premieres in New York and Los Angeles on March 6. See the trailer, released on January 24, below.
