Opens in Australian cinemas 25 March
* * * 1/2
Norwegian documentary The Painter and The Thief is an almost uncomfortably intimate portrait of the strange vagaries of human need. When Barbora Kysilkova, a Czech painter living in Norway, has two of her paintings brazenly stolen from an Oslo gallery, and the thief is caught, rather than seek vengeance, she seeks to redeem him. Why she does so is no more cut and dried than why he stole her paintings in the first place, but both acts are born of pain. He is an addict; her wounds are less visible.
The film is striking enough as a very close portrait of two intriguing people, and interesting enough as a snapshot of young folk on the outskirts of convention in Oslo, but becomes quite powerful in the third act, when things get weirder, and director Benjamin Ree is not only there to capture them but to structure his narrative, in the edit, for optimum revelation. Like Kysilkova’s paintings, The Painter and the Thief is photo-realistic but artfully constructed for maximum pathos, darkness and surprise.