The Gallerist Is A Work of Art. Unless It Isn’t.

Sundance Film Review: The Gallerist
Director: Cathy Yan
Concordia Studio, MountainA, Slow Pony
Premiere: 01.24.2026

Art is subjective — until someone tells you that it isn’t. Sometimes popular opinion is everything, and that opinion means high market value, and a canvas is only as meaningful as the person rich enough to validate it. The Gallerist is a wickedly fun and unabashedly in-your-face satire on the commodification of art as a status symbol.

Polina Polinski (Academy Award winner Natalie Portman, Black Swan) is a driven art dealer preparing for a make-or-break showing at Art Basel Miami Beach, showcasing a new sculpture entitled “The Emasculator” by up-and-coming artist Stella Burgess (Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers). During a private preview, influential critic Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis, The Hangover) dismisses her exhibition — until a sudden accident results in Dalton’s death as he is impaled on the sculpture. 

Facing professional ruin, Polina, her assistant Kiki (Jenna Ortega, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) and Stella make a reckless decision: They present Dalton’s corpse as a provocative new installation. As attention explodes, Marianne Gorman (Academy Award winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago), a legendary dealer — and Kiki’s icy aunt — arrives and unexpectedly joins in on the scheme, raising the stakes of Polina’s bid for recognition. Meanwhile, the reappearance of her former partner Tom Mayer (Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction, Paradise) complicates the fragile balance between ambition and personal loyalty. As sales climb and scrutiny tightens, the deception threatens to collapse, exposing how the art world feeds on spectacle, power and moral compromise.

Moving at a breathless clip, The Gallerist barrels forward with the same manic urgency as the art world it skewers, its breakneck pacing mirroring a culture that never stops performing long enough to reflect. Director Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs, Birds of Prey) coats the film in a deliberately ostentatious sheen — every frame and hyperactive camera movement polished, posed and screaming for attention — while constantly pulling the rug out from under that surface to expose the emptiness beneath. The film’s zany energy is tightly choreographed, less chaos than controlled frenzy, and it’s propelled by Andrew Orkin and Joseph Shirley’s hypnotic, propulsive score, which pulses like a nervous system on overdrive. 

Together, direction and music transform the film into a living critique of image over truth, where style isn’t just decoration; it’s the point, the product and the trap. The genius of The Gallerist comes from the fact that any debate over whether it’s too on-the-nose and makes a bold statement or whether it’s simply trying too hard to be chic and provocative echoes the ever-changing and manipulated narrative on the sculpture at the center of the film, and it’s hard to write a review without feeling like the joke’s on you. Thankfully, I don’t mind being the butt of a good joke.

Portman delivers a bravura performance as a desperate poser teetering on the knife-edge between triumph and catastrophe, imbuing every scene with restless energy and razor-sharp cunning. Opposite her, Ortega dazzles with impeccable comic timing, effortlessly turning chaos into charm and grounding the film’s wild momentum with perfectly judged levity. Adding a layer of elegance and formidable presence, Randolph is as divine as her name suggests, and Zeta-Jones commands the screen, her charisma both enchanting and intimidating, a reminder that power in the art world is as much about aura as it is about influence. Together, the quartet creates a thrilling dynamic, balancing frenzy, wit and poise in a way that makes the film feel both vibrant and unpredictable. Daniel Brühl (Inglorious Basterds, Captain America: The Winter Soldier) is riotously unrestrained as Cristos, a flamboyant art buyer whose every gesture and demand injects chaos, comedy and wild energy. 

The Gallerist isn’t going to be for everyone, but it’s so entertaining and stylishly executed that few will be able to write it off entirely. In the end, it’s sure to be swiftly picked up for distribution as the buzzy and exciting film is sold to a bidder at Sundance, as the powerhouse that is Cathy Yan echoes her protagonist in controlling the narrative on her art. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.