Sundance film festival: the Oscar winner can’t find the right tone for this grating comedy which also wastes Jenna Ortega, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Catherine Zeta-Jones
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here’s a mildly amusing on-paper joke at the centre of manic art world comedy The Gallerist: what if someone was accidentally impaled on an exhibit but rather than report it, the corpse became part of the artwork?
Sure, poking fun at the absurdity of modern art might seem a little dated and definitely a little too easy but maybe with a packed cast including Oscar winners Natalie Portman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, there could be a fun, fast-paced caper here? The answer is a depressing nope, the film a pained and grating misfire played like Weekend at Bernie’s for MoMA members that’s not funny or smart enough to work as farce or satire.
It’s the latest from writer-director Cathy Yan, who was at Sundance in 2018 with Dead Pigs, a colourful, poppy Shanghai-set ensemble comedy drama that was vibrant and commercial enough to get her a DC gig, making the most of Harley Quinn spin-off Birds of Prey. The Gallerist is her inevitable next step, a combination of one for them and one for herself, a star-studded dark comedy that, during her introduction before the Sundance premiere, she jokes she didn’t have to edit in her living room. But it’s a major stumble, limply aiming at low-hanging fruit (isn’t the art world kinda dopey?) and wasting a cast who could and should be having more fun.
