Sundance 2026 Review: THE GALLERIST, Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega Co-Star in Ambitious Art-World Satire

Art-world satires come (The Square); art-world satires go (Velvet Buzzsaw). Few, if any, art-world satires leave any impression whatsoever beyond the transient or the ephemeral.

 

Writer-director Cathy Yan’s (Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, Dead Pigs) latest film, The Gallerist, falls comfortably (or maybe uncomfortably) into this soon-to-be forgotten, memory-holed category.

 

Undoubtedly slick, undeniably stylish, and almost as tedious, stale, and vapid as the self-serving, narcissistic art-world characters at its center, The Gallerist delivers an empty fistful of shocks, thrills, and distractions of the blackly comic, shallow, hollow kind. But for its frenetic, rapid-fire 94-minute running time, The Gallerist almost makes you forget it has nothing new, novel, or original to say about the art world denizens it flaccidly satirizes.

 

Co-written by Yan and James Pedersen (High Heat), The Gallerist centers on Polina Polinski (Natalie Portman), an art gallery owner facing financial ruin if her latest “discovery,” Stella Burgess (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), doesn’t become a hit with the art critics, social media influencers, and curators who determine the value, if any, of Stella’s art works. Through a combination of osmosis and parasitism, Polina acquires, repackages, and resells Stella’s authentic cred as a Black woman and artist into an easily commodifiable product. 

 

Sometimes aided, occasionally hindered by Kiki (Jenna Ortega), her perpetually frazzled executive assistant, Polina hopes to relaunch her floundering gallery, convince art-world denizens of Stella’s intrinsic worth as an artist, and save her gallery from impending bankruptcy. Only Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis), an obnoxious, self-entitled influencer and legend in his own mind, and Polina’s ex-husband (Sterling K. Brown), the heir to a tuna fish-related fortune, stand in Polina’s way. 

 

Anxious to obtain access to Polina’s gallery and Burgess’s work before anyone else does, Dalton bullies Polina and Kiki into giving him a pre-opening tour. Before he can finish torturing Polina with his promise of an all-access public takedown, Dalton exits this mortal plane, accidentally impaling himself on one of Burgess’s oversized sculptures, a pair of testicle-clipping shears, leaving Polina and Kiki in a decidedly sticky, messy situation: The gallery opening to the general public within minutes, a bloody, bleeding, life-like corpse hanging limply from the shears, and no time to extricate Dalton or themselves from the situation.

 

Unsurprisingly, complications ensue, starting with a desperate Polina convincing Kiki and a bewildered Burgess to repurpose Dalton’s corpse as part of the exhibit. Later, when success seems assured — and, of course, the dim-witted, status-hungry public sinks the ruse hook, line, and stinker — Polina, Kiki, and Stella, helped along by Kiki’s rapacious art-curator aunt, Marianne Gorman (Catherine Zeta-Jones), attempt to sell the art exhibit, decomposing corpse impaled on shears and all, before the local police, Dalton’s inquisitive girlfriend, and a too-rich, macho art buyer (Daniel Brühl), figure out the ruse before the co-conspirators end up on the wrong side of prison bars. 

 

Led by an ultra-talented cast, including three Oscar winners (Portman, Randolph, Zeta-Jones), a three-time Emmy Award-winner (Brown), and a future award winner (Ortega), desperately trying every performance-related stratagem to elevate the undercooked plot, uneven dialogue, and increasingly absurdist, farcical complications, The Gallerist never runs out of the hyperkinetic, frenetic energy of its opening moments. It’s a minor plus. It’s still a plus worth noting, though, even if ultimately, it feels like much ado about nothing, except perhaps another art-world satire that refuses to burrow beyond its otherwise intriguing ideas about art, commerce, and the commodification of the former by the latter. 

 

Yan leans hard on cinematographer Federico Cesca’s (Industry, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Patti Cake$) whirling, gyrating, careening camerawork and Francesca Di Mottola’s oddly credible production design to give The Gallerist its art-world milieu, and at least there, Yan’s third film manages to succeed, albeit too sporadically to ultimately make a significant difference.