Vertigo this ain’t, but there’s some quasi-Gothic charm in the baroque premise and eccentric marginal details, including a mathematically gifted dwarf.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Between its erotic underpinnings and increasingly preposterous third-act reveals, the film could easily pass for middle-grade Hitchcock. Since its premise is that forgeries can still have value, that’s a high compliment.
Filmed in what you might call the international hotel style, Tornatore's idiotic premise is entertaining if you don't inspect it too carefully, or look for anything beneath the portentousness.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Though it begs for a little lightening up, a moment of irony, a wink at the audience, this dead-serious fairy tale about a mysterious young woman (and a phantom automaton straight out of Hugo) is worth watching for Geoffrey Rush’s sensitive, never pandering performance.
Aiming for a Hitchcockian take on an eccentric auctioneer (well-handled by Geoffrey Rush) who becomes enamored of an heiress with severe agoraphobia, the pic ends up more in Dan Brown territory, with over-obvious setups and phony insight into the art establishment.
Strangely old-fashioned in its construction and requiring a Golden Gate-level feat of engineering to achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary to unironically enjoy it.
The fully committed Rush, at least, commands our constant attention, and no movie with a kookier-than-usual Ennio Morricone score (dig those staccato-chanting chorines!) could ever be a total waste of canvas.
An intriguingly Hitchcockian premise gradually takes on a preposterous air in the art-world noir The Best Offer.
Slant Magazine by Nick McCarthy
It ascribes to the falsehood that a rarefied milieu inherently infuses a film with intelligence, as if inept execution can be covered up by pretty lensing.
The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold
Mr. Rush can’t fly far on Mr. Tornatore’s dialogue and workmanlike plotting, and Sylvia Hoeks, as Claire, doesn’t bring a corresponding energy.