Made You Look, 2020
This documentary follows a scandal that rocked the art world, in which several works purportedly by high profile artists were revealed to be clever fakes. The film centers its narrative on the art dealer named Anne Freedman who sold the fakes, and the question of what she knew and when she knew it.
There are a few levels to this documentary, and if you're like me, your mileage may vary depending on how sympathetic you are to the problems of very, very rich people.
The part that I found most engaging was simply the way that the culture around these fake paintings was built and then collapsed. What the entire incident exposes is just how far people are willing to go to preserve their egos. In the case of Freedman, that includes believing in the fake paintings well past the point that she should have been very suspicious. (I kind of come down on the side that she really dug herself in and was in denial, but if someone thinks she was totally in on it from the beginning, I don't blame them). This comes out most strongly when the whole incident finally goes to trial and suddenly people who had verified the works as authentic claim that they didn't.
Something that is really missing from the film is the point of view of a woman named Glafira Rosales, the woman who brought the paintings to Freedman and served as the middleman between the forger (a Chinese painter named Pei-Shen Qian). She is not interviewed in the film, and is seen only in "no comment!" style new footage. Paperwork shows that she claims to have been trapped in an abusive relationship with a super-shady Spanish wheeler-and-dealer. This guy
does appear in the film---under the VERY watchful eye of his lawyer---and, yeah, I find myself inclined to believe that things were weird between them. Or maybe she was a conniving schemer!! Either way, she feels like a critical missing piece.
For better or worse, the documentary hinges on Freedman's experience at the center of things, and what it feels like to be put on the hook for a scam that included about a dozen people. Also missing from the film is her boss, a man named Michael Heller, who seems pretty shady himself. Anne comes across as very self-centered (never seeming to consider the feelings of people who bought the fake works), but I did find myself somewhat sympathetic to the way that she is left high and dry by the people around her. Like it or not, she has paperwork from experts verifying the paintings. Like it or not, her boss knew that her deals were bringing in millions of dollars of profit. And like it or not, she was certainly not the origin point of the overall scam.
But to go back to what I wrote in the beginning, this whole film is very much about rich people's problems. If you have millions of dollars to spend on art, and you are not an actual art museum, please don't tell me about how "emotional" and sensitive you were when you learned that one of the things you own that is worth millions is not worth millions. As a thriller, the film works well. But there is no real sense of peril here. All of these people are going to be fine. Rosales--who apparently now works as a waitress--is the only person who even really pulls at my sympathies, but that might be because I never got to actually hear her talk!
The experts interviewed range in their use. Some are incredibly strong in their opinions, which is really easy when you are looking at a situation in retrospect. I maybe most appreciated Marjorie Cohn, a conservator from Harvard who seems to have the best grasp on the human dynamics at play in the whole thing.
An entertaining look at a scandalous event.