THE STORY – A gallerist, desperate, hatches a scheme to sell a dead guy at Art Basel Miami.
THE CAST – Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Catherine Zeta Jones, Sterling K. Brown, Daniel Brühl, Zach Galifinakis & Charlie xcx
THE TEAM – Cathy Yan (Director/Writer) & James Pedersen (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes
It’s easy to imagine that Cathy Yan would have strong feelings about critics, corporate art, and pretentiousness after a tough experience with her last film. Her debut, “Dead Pigs,” received critical acclaim and helped establish Yan as a fresh new voice in cinema. She then landed “Birds of Prey,” the big-budget Harley Quinn girl gang flick. Despite decent reviews, “Birds of Prey” became something of a lightning rod for sexist comic book fans who relished any opportunity to bash a female-driven film, especially after it bombed hard at the box office (never mind that it was released just weeks before the world shut down due to the pandemic).
All that is to say, setting her latest film in the cutthroat world of modern art seemed poised to offer pointed commentary on her first experience in the studio system. Unfortunately, “The Gallerist” never gets there. It’s painfully unfunny, wasting a talented cast on a zany story that never communicates a clear vision.
Polina Polinski (Natalie Portman) has a lot to prove with her gallery opening. Fresh off a divorce from her wealthy husband (Sterling K. Brown), Polina is desperate to show the world she wasn’t just arm candy, and that she’s the one with real taste. It doesn’t help that her Miami gallery is located in an old Jiffy Lube. Still, Polina has curated an exhibition for a promising new artist, Stella Burgess (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), and has been working tirelessly with her assistant, Kiki (Jenna Ortega), to pull it all together, including fixing a leaking A/C unit.
When “art influencer” Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis) arrives for an early look at the exhibit and clashes with Polina, he takes an unfortunate spill from the leaking A/C unit. He is impaled on Burgess’s sharp sculpture, “The Emasculator.” With visitors arriving at that exact moment, Polina has no choice but to pass Dalton off as part of the installation, launching a madcap afternoon spent racing to clean up the mess, save her gallery, and avoid prison. That’s not to mention Catherine Zeta-Jones, Daniel Brühl, and Charli XCX joining the fray as well.
It’s an absurd plot, and the huge cast throws itself into it. Despite the immense talent on screen, however, the performers seem to be working from different understandings of the film’s tone. Portman is broad, silly, and tightly coiled, as is Ortega. Randolph, meanwhile, brings much more depth and authenticity, never quite playing in the same goofy sandbox. One of the film’s central problems is this tonal tightrope act: it wants us to laugh at Polina’s self-absorption and antics, but the material isn’t funny enough. Much of the humor is obvious at best and woefully outdated at worst. Galifianakis may be well cast as a snob, but this portrayal of influencers feels a decade out of date.
The only laughs the film generates are surface-level ones, such as the shock of Hardberry’s demise. When “The Gallerist” goes for bigger swings, like a bidding war that spirals out of control, it falls flat. Yan attempts to energize the comedy with stylized camera movements meant to heighten the reality. The camera weaves through the gallery, flies through walls, and tilts into Dutch angles, but the result is often distracting. Any sense of intentional campiness instead reads as emptiness.
Satires can find sharp insight by centering despicable characters, as Yan attempts to do here, but the plot is so absurd that once we’re asked to sympathize with Polina or root for her, there’s no going back. The sentimentality Yan tries to introduce clashes with the Looney Tunes-style chaos unfolding around the gallery. The film’s observations about the art world and critics are shallow and obvious, never deepening into anything richer. Even as a surface-level, zany ride, it isn’t very fun, leaving little for the audience to hang on to. “The Gallerist” is a disappointing misfire.
