The twisty and satisfying The Burnt Orange Heresy begins with an inordinately handsome man, James Figueras (Claes Bang of The Square), preparing for what seems like an art lecture as he rehearses his presentation in his well-furnished apartment. His rehearsal is then intercut with the actual lecture, in front of a group of older men and woman, where he focuses on a painting by a Norwegian artist who survived the Holocaust. The lecturer describes how the artist and his sister escaped, and he ties this story to the abstract painting in question. He then asks his audience who would buy this painting. When a dozen hands go up, he states the truth: the painting is a fake, as is the story of its artist. When asked if anybody wants to buy the painting now, nobody raises a hand, except one woman, Berenice (Widows’ Elizabeth Debicki), the youngest in the room.

She is fascinated by his story. He is fascinated by her. After the lecture, James takes her to his place and they have fabulous, beautiful people sex. Afterwards, there is a change in the framing of the couple. As they are having a post-coital conversation, the camera frames them in unflattering angles, accentuating their faults, their beauty falling into the typical ordinariness of human bodies.

What ensues is a classy chamber noir, based on a novel by Charles Willeford (who also wrote Miami Blues) and adapted by Scott Spencer, who penned the novel and screenplay for A Simple Plan. These authors are masters at quietly and diligently picking at characters until we notice the rot and confusion underneath.

James resembles a more downtrodden Pierce Brosnan. He is an art critic with a prodigious talent who has been reduced to giving lectures to American tourists in Italy to peddle his book of essays. However, he has just received the scoop of a lifetime: mega-collector Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) has invited him to his palatial estate to interview the reclusive painter Jerome Debney, who hasn’t shown a painting in decades and lives in a cottage on Cassidy’s estate. Impulsively, James takes his aforementioned new companion, Berenice, along. What Cassidy eventually wants James to obtain from Debney is more complicated than just an interview, and the billionaire blackmails the critic to ensure the job is done.

For those interested in house porn, this place is for you. The expansive Baroque palazzo, decadently and tastefully decorated, is set back in the woods by Lake Como, and is an Architectural Digest pictorial come to life. If the actors weren’t so good, the setting would threaten to overwhelm their poor mortal selves.

When Debney arrives in the story about a third of the way through (played by a deliciously hammy but always on point Donald Sutherland), he and Berenice find a kind of kinship, which James hopes will help him get his newly acquired task done. It does until it doesn’t.

At one point, Debney advices Berenice that hiding your true self behind a mask only begets more masks to hide behind until you lose track of your true self. This movie being a noir, and a pretty good one at that, those masks are slowly revealed to be what they are, and the true selves of some of these characters are none too pretty to look at.

The first two thirds are an exquisitely modulated slow burn. Director Giuseppe Capotondi takes his time picking at the underlying psychic wounds of his deceptively downtrodden trio—James, Berenice, and Debney—aided by the gliding camerawork of cinematographer David Ungaro. The acting is lovely, and the dialogue sharp and piercing. There’s a wonderful chemistry between Bang and Debicki, alternately sultry and playful.

However, one particular protagonist makes a monumentally stupid and difficult decision difficult to justify, which sours the viewing experience considerably. The action isn’t shocking so much as ridiculously out of character. It retains a sour taste, even as the camera’s final reveal closes out the proceedings in what would have been a satisfying manner.

Yet The Burnt Orange Heresy is still worth seeing. One just wishes it had managed to keep its obvious intelligence in play through the entire film.