Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Art of Love’ on Netflix, a Turkish Art-Heist Romantic Thriller

Art of Love (now streaming on Netflix) is for those of us who haven’t seen enough movies about elaborate art heists, which should be approximately none of us, since elaborate art heist movies are a dime a dozen even before you apply your BOGO coupon. But that doesn’t mean this Turkish romantic action-thriller isn’t worth 99 minutes of your life – sometimes, a movie can hone formula to perfection, which pretty much has to be done for well-worn subgenres like this. Of course, that makes the task of making an elaborate art heist movie even more difficult, and I’m afraid Art of Love just ain’t up to the task.

ART OF LOVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A very HIGH TECH art heist is happening here in Budapest, with the frenzied tappity-tappity-tapping of the hacker and the cable-snipping of the security system-disarmer and the casual-strolling-in-and-nabbing-of-a-painting of the thief himself. They’re a team and they’re as in fricking sync as any art-heist team in the history of movies. Who is this thief, anyway? That’s what Alin (Esra Bilgic) wants to know. She and her partner Ozan (Ushan Cakir) are from Interpol’s Department of Art-Theft Stopping, and they’re on the thief’s heels. Weird thing is, he’s not taking the most valuable paintings; it’s almost as if he’s curating a collection. “We’re dealing with a romantic thief,” Alin assesses, and she should know the work of an art expert, since she’s an art expert herself.

And so Alin stays hot on the trail as annoying generic spy/heist-movie music plays on the soundtrack, something that occurs so persistently, it’s like a puppy that keeps dropping a filthy drool-soaked tennis ball in your lap and won’t take no for an answer, because “no” is not something that’s within its capabilities to comprehend. You know how music can be like a character in a movie? In Art of Love, the music is the almighty lord and savior god itself, omnipresent and hovering over everything, staring at you as you scratch your ass and shower and perform all the embarrassing little tasks of personal hygiene you do every day. Which is to say, the music in this movie can f— off forever. Go away, music, please go away. 

Where was I? Right: Hacking through this public-domain-worthy score to get to the plot, which thicks when Alin discovers the thief is Guney (Birkan Sokullu), who just so happens to be her ex-lover. The same ex-lover who disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving her heartbroken, and one can presume he was either hiding out after stealing some valuable art, or he fell into a crevasse and had to saw off his own arm with one of those little cheese spreaders in order to rescue himself. Which could it be? The plot thicks even more when we realize Guney is a Very Rich Businessman, so why would he steal paintings that he could probably just buy with the coins in the console of his Benz? Hmm, says Thinky Guy Emoji. Hmm.

Anyway, Alin’s plan is to SUBTERFUGE the shit outta the situation. It helps that Guney doesn’t know she became an Interpol agent after he vamoosed, which makes it easier for her to honey-trap him a little, you know, rekindle the old flame and see if he wants to try to cook with her again. It works, of course, and she manages to convince her stereotype of a gruff chief-boss to give her the OK to go with Guney to Prague and wherever his private jet takes him, and maybe catch him red-handed. But, oh man, Guney is still pretty charming, and he looks pretty fine when he’s doing his morning pommel-horse workout, and with all that money and luxury, Alin remembers that life with him is “like a fairy tale.” Will she remain committed to busting his ass straight to prison, or will she become his S.O. again? ALL SPOILERS WILL REMAIN LOCKED IN A SECRET AIRTIGHT BASEMENT ROOM BEHIND A DOOR WITH A HIGH-TECH SECURITY LOCK THAT REQUIRES VERBAL AND FACIAL RECOGNITION THAT ONLY EXISTS IN SPY-HEIST MOVIES AND CAN NEVER BE HACKED UNLESS YOU’RE A CHARACTER IN A SPY-HEIST MOVIE. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Best hilarious pommel-horse scene since Fifty Shades Darker, which was the best hilarious pommel-horse scene since Gymkata!

Performance Worth Watching: No argument, Bilgic has some charismatic screen presence. But this cold empty vacuum of a screenplay gives her a character with no discernible personality.

Memorable Dialogue: Guney references the movie that Art of Love maybe wants to be: “Have you never watched Mission: Impossible?” 

Sex and Skin: One of the many failings of this excursion into sexy spy-heist movie cliches is, there’s no sex in it. 

Our Take: Art of Love is so flimsy, that shitty music – which never ever ceases, and tells us what to feel because the story and characters make us feel nothing, and sucks mightily, and drove me CRAZY – threatens to become the entire movie, consuming it like a baleen whale to a massive school of krill. The movie consists almost entirely of visual and narrative shortcuts, shorthanding all the basic elements of the genre: the elaborate setups and executions of various heist/bust plans, the flashbacks to what really happened, the sexual electricity between two eye-pleasing leads, the chase sequence through the streets of a gorgeous old city with cobblestone streets. It’s all presented with minimal energy and annoyingly slick execution, in a quest to be exactly like 200 other movies just like it, except more boring. It’s a bunch of flashy edits, cinematographic gloss and no substantive craft. It creates the illusion of excitement instead of any actual excitement.

Directed by Recai Karagoz, the movie wears its off-the-rack Hollywood influences on its sleeve: It’s a depressingly tepid take on smoldering romance The Thomas Crown Affair or an art-world crime-thriller like The International; recent Netflix programmer Lift spent a whole lot more money on roughly the same premise; and if only it were as memorably terrible as Mortdecai, we might be entertained. There’s zero chemistry and sexual tension between Bilgic and Sokullul, both of whom look lovely and seem relatively committed to a boilerplate screenplay, which betrays them and washes them out with its tide of wearisome genre tropes. If it were a scrappy production with a few rough edges, it might be more endearing, but it’s witless and illogical and, come the ending, mostly nonsensical. It’s junk food cinema that fills the hole while offering no nutrition whatsoever. 

Our Call: Art of Love? More like Art of Shove it Out the Window! SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.