Review: In 'Painter and the Thief,' an unlikely friendship

The documentary “The Painter and the Thief” has a few wrinkles to add to the old Picasso adage that great artists steal.

“The Painter and the Thief,” by Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree, is about a Czech painter, Barbora Kysilkova, who has two of her paintings stolen from an Oslo gallery in April 2015. The two thieves, whose unhurried heist is captured by surveillance cameras, are caught. But the paintings — a pair of large photorealistic works estimated to be worth 20,000 Euros — never materialize.

At the trial for one — a tough-looking, tattoo-covered man — Barbora makes a request. She wants to know why. Why take her two paintings and leave the others? “Because they were beautiful," replies Karl-Bertil Nordland.

This image released by Neon shows Karl Bertil-Nordland, left, and Barbora Kysilkova in a scene from "The Painter and the Thief." (Barbora KysilkovaNeon via AP)

Now, if you want to make an artist blush, you can hardly do better than to be so passionate about a painting that you're willing to be incarcerated for it. Barbora is suitably smitten and soon begins meeting with Karl-Bertil to paint him. He becomes her model.

“The Painter and the Thief," which first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, will debut on Hulu, on-demand and in some theaters on Friday. It's about the relationship that follows between Barbora and Karl-Bertil. Little about how things unfold is predictable. Through twists and turns, “The Painter and the Thief” depicts not just the two-way transactional relationship between artist and subject, but the shared pain and mutual rehabilitation that can inspire and surround art making.

Ree's camera lingers intimately while Barbora gets to know Karl-Bertil. He talks about gang life and drug addiction and his difficult childhood. A tattoo of “Snitchers Are a Dying Breed” is inked across his chest. Where he left the stolen painting he can’t remember.

This image released by Neon shows Karl Bertil-Nordland in a scene from "The Painter and the Thief." (Barbora KysilkovaNeon via AP)

But we also quickly grasp that Karl-Bertil is more than a stock criminal recast as muse. His home has paintings and prints covering the walls. When Barbora shows him her first painting of him, he doesn’t just tear up. He weeps.

The movie sharply pivots midway, turning the canvas around to examine the painter — where her attraction to self-destruction comes from, how trauma has shaped her life and art. Their relationship isn't romantic but it's interdependent and reflective. “She sees me very well but she forgets that I can see her, too," Karl-Bertil says.

Any documentary about the making of art adds its own lens. And there are times that “The Painter and the Thief,” which stokes an air of mystery, feels like it's leaving less convenient parts just out of the frame.

But the film also gathers force in scenes that capture Karl-Bertil's long road back, from imprisonment, addiction and injury. (The Norwegian prison system, we see close up, is vastly more encouraging than the American one.) How much does his turnaround have to do with Barbora? Maybe they met at just the right time. Or maybe before Karl-Bertil could change, he needed to be seen.

"The Painter and the Thief,” a Neon release, is not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. Running time: 116 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

NEW YORK (AP) — Min Jin Lee's first novel since her million-selling “Pachinko” is a long book that grew out of a basic question: What do Koreans care most about?

“We’re obsessed with education, and it became my obsession over why Koreans care so much,” says Lee, whose “American Hagwon,” scheduled for Sept. 29, will likely be one of the year's most anticipated books. Hagwons are for-profit tutoring centers — sometimes likened to “cram schools” — where Koreans of all ages receive instruction for everything from English to guitar to cooking. Any language school or organization that gives private lesson music classes” can be considered a Hagwon, Lee says.

The author, 57, calls herself an “accidental historian,” a novelist who uses broad narratives to unearth the past, make sense of the present and explore race, gender and class among other issues. “American Hagwon” is the third of a planned quartet about Korea and the Korean diaspora that began with “Free Food for Millionaires” in 2007 and continued a decade later with “Pachinko,” a National Book Award finalist that was adapted by Apple TV+ into a series and has been translated into dozens of languages.

In 2024, The New York Times ranked “Pachinko” at No. 15 among the best novels of the 21st century.

Cardinal, a Hachette Book Group imprint, is calling her new release a deep look into “what happens when the rules shift, the world order becomes suddenly unrecognizable and benchmarks of success are no longer a guarantee.” In “American Hagwon,” Lee sets her story everywhere from Korea to Australia to Southern California as she tracks the journey of a middle-class Korean family upended by the Asian financial crisis and hoping to regain its bearings.

“Almost 10 years after Pachinko, Min Jin Lee continues to give shape to history’s seismic shifts in her fiction, refracting generational change through indelible, masterfully etched characters you can’t help rooting for,” Cardinal Publisher and Senior Vice President Reagan Arthur said in a statement.

A native of Seoul whose family emigrated to New York City when she was 7, Lee attended the elite Bronx High School of Science, studied history at Yale University and law at Georgetown University. She knows well the importance of preparation, and laughs as she remembers that her father has nicknamed her “the turtle,” because she is slow — but “very steady.” Her books take a long time, in part, because she puts so much work into them. Her stories are based not just on research and reflection, but on extended travel and interviews.

“I want to hold up a mirror to society, and, as the kids say, do a ’vibe check,” she says.

FILE - Min Jin Lee attends the GQ Global Creativity Awards in New York on April 6, 2023. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)