"An auctioneer is like a plastic surgeon. You have to trust them," she says. "So I trust you." She entrusts her piece to André Masson (played by the actor Alex Lutz)-a character named for the French Surrealist painter-who explains to his new assistant: "The fantastic part of the job is turning up a real rarity. You're Indiana Jones. But 99% of the time is soliciting. Like a whore."
"Although Schiele was inspired by Vincent van Gogh's bright, blooming sunflowers, his own depiction is sad, dark and depressed by the looming First World War. Thomas Seydoux, a former director at Christie's France, has described the work as a "large, dark oil painting, uncut flowers, but sickly sensual, blue, violet, ochre, brown like spiders. Almost a self-portrait." (André's character is based on Seydoux, who together with his colleague Andreas Rumbler travelled to Mulhouse and identified the work.)"
"Based on a true story, the French filmmaker Pascal Bonitzer's Auction takes its audience to the Alsatian city of Mulhouse. There, a young chemical-factory worker named Martin Keller (Arcadi Radeff) discovers that among the belongings in the house he has just purchased-in order to be near his widowed mother-is a large painting that turns out to be the long-lost Schiele."
The film opens with an elderly blind woman negotiating the sale of a painting and entrusting it to auctioneer André Masson (Alex Lutz). Masson frames finding a rarity as an "Indiana Jones" moment while calling most of the job solicitation. The central object is Egon Schiele's Wilted Sunflowers (Autumn Sun II) (1914), a work once confiscated by the Nazis. Based on a true story, the plot moves to Mulhouse where chemical-worker Martin Keller (Arcadi Radeff) discovers the long-lost Schiele among belongings in a house he bought to be near his widowed mother. Documents uncovered link former owners to the German police.
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