The Best Offer - Ending Explained

The final act reveals that the entire interaction with Claire was an elaborate long-con masterminded by Virgil’s 'friend' Billy and the mechanic Robert. Billy, resentful of Virgil’s dismissive attitude toward his art, used Robert (the technical lead) and an actress (the woman pretending to be Claire) to exploit Virgil's psychological vulnerabilities. They used Virgil's own expertise in forgeries to trap him, even building a fake 'automaton' to keep him coming back to the villa. The scam culminates in the theft of Virgil's entire secret collection of female portraits. The ending reveals that Virgil is now in a mental institution, though he eventually travels to Prague to wait at the 'Night and Day' cafe—a location Claire mentioned in a story. He is waiting for her, clinging to the belief that her whispered 'no matter what happens, I really do love you' was the 'authentic' stroke in the master forgery of their relationship.

There are several ways to interpret the film's haunting conclusion in Prague:

• The Hopeful Reading: Virgil waits at the 'Night and Day' cafe because he truly believes that Claire loved him. He is following the 'something authentic' theory, hoping that her confession of love was the one part of the scam that was real.
• The Delusional Reading: Some viewers interpret the final sequence as a hallucination or a manifestation of Virgil's mental breakdown while in the asylum. The sterile, white, rotating environment of the asylum early in the ending sequence suggests he may never have left.
• The Purgatory Reading: The cafe represents a personal purgatory where Virgil is trapped in time (surrounded by clocks), unable to return to his old life of art or move forward into a new one.