The object in question is a pint-sized Henry Moore statuette, owned by shallow sophisticate Andie McDowell and appraised at $35,000, an amount in many ways even more beautiful to its owner than the item itself. Especially when McDowell and her 'husband' (played to haughty perfection by John Malkovich) find themselves at a fiscal disadvantage while living beyond their means in a posh London hotel. In the vernacular of the upwardly mobile, they aren't 'fluid', and when the statuette disappears they immediately accuse each other of plotting to collect the insurance value. The film is an underhanded, cynical, satirical poke at American materialism, pointless in the end because nothing is resolved. But the plot itself is secondary to the characters (ugly though they are), and rarely have two actors been better suited to their roles: McDowell's poor little rich girl routine is by now second nature, and Malkovich captures all the self-absorbed boredom of the ersatz upper class with his languid voice and steady reptilian gaze.
Review of The Object of Beauty
