Taking on the art world is notoriously difficult—it’s already too ridiculous, and so the heightening of reality necessary for proper satire doesn’t work. There’s nowhere to go. But we need bold artists, ones that harness their inner Tobias Fünke and ponder: “But it might work for us.” And so Cathy Yan gets ample credit for going for it with The Gallerist.
The Gallerist opens in a posh gallery in Miami the morning Art Basel is set to begin. The calm before the storm, gallery owner Polina (Natalie Portman in a Warhol-shaded blonde wig) and her equally high-strung assistant, Kiki (Jenna Ortega) are nervous. Polina believes in her new artist Stella Burgess (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). But will the uncultured masses, i.e. those present in Art Basel to party and post flashy art on their Instagram, get it? It’s an open question, and with its Sundance premiere, it’s impossible not to note similarities between this Art Basel crowd that Polina and Kiki loathe with many of those present in Park City, who see zero movies and spend all of their energy attempting to get into agency parties.
Against their better judgment, Polina lets in a brash influencer, Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis, playing it to 11 like everyone in this movie), early, hoping that he’ll give the show a shout-out to his legion of followers. Before Dalton can do this, he slips and ends up impaled on a piece of art. And so The Gallerist becomes Weekend at Bernie’s set in the art world, moving at a breakneck pace through obstacle after obstacle, as Polina and Kiki figure out what to do with this dead body, which is attracting a lot of attention as a bold piece of art. The film’s major issue is not the plotting of these obstacles, rather it’s just never funny enough. From a Matthew Marks reference early to British artist Damien Hirst late, Yan’s script is a relentless parade of name-dropping. It reads as an insecurity, a plea to the audience that she understands this world she’s playing within.
In fellow Sundance title, The Moment, Alexander Skarsgård’s performance as an egomaniacal director is offered center stage, with the other characters largely playing it straight around him. The impulse might be to crowd the screen with a host of ridiculous characters, the promise of watching them play off of one another too enticing to resist. But this too often sucks the oxygen out of the room, as audiences can really only handle one over-the-top persona at a time. From the cold-as-ice art dealer (Catherine Zeta Jones) to the tasteless collector (Daniel Brühl), The Gallerist pits its flurry of art world caricatures against each other in almost every scene. And with every performance played to the bleachers, the end result is exhausting. Some actors fare better chewing the scenery, and an auction scene that draws its drama straight from an Uncut Gems’ setpiece sells its stakes effectively, with Ortega performing the fast-talking auctioneer role admirably.
More Velvet Buzzsaw than The Square, The Gallerist suffers from piling on the references and refusing to give audiences a chance to breathe. Technically proficient, its hyperactive Steadicam zooms around the gallery, keeping the singular gallery location from ever feeling claustrophobic, and composer Andrew Orkin’s standout score creates a heist-like mood and keeps things humming along.
In its closing moments, The Gallerist posits that while all of the machinations of the art world are ridiculous (and amplified in Art Basel), there are still people, like Polina, who wade through this rigmarole because they understand that the best art still holds the power to move. This late shift away from cynicism rests solely on a single painting and likewise feels too pat as an unearned coda.
The Gallerist premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.