The Gallerist Is Not For All Tastes

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Like many comedies about the art world, The Gallerist doesn’t offer groundbreaking insights – it covers familiar territory. However, it’s genuinely fun to watch, thanks to lively performances and director Cathy Yan’s quick pace and visual gags. The movie works well as long as it stays light and humorous, which it does for most of its 88 minutes. Ultimately, whether you enjoy it will likely depend on how you react to Natalie Portman’s bold performance as a fragile, possibly unstable Miami gallery owner who uses art-world pretension to mask her underlying vulnerability.

Let me tell you, Natalie Portman’s character, Polina, is intense. I mean, she completely loses it when she finds out her assistant put traffic cones around a tiny puddle from a leaky AC unit – on the day of a huge art show, no less! Her gallery is…let’s just say struggling. She built it on the site of an old Jiffy Lube using divorce money from her ex – a canned fish tycoon, by the way – and this current exhibition is basically its last hope. Polina is desperate to keep up appearances, to pretend everything is fine. You get the sense she started because she genuinely loved art, but now it’s all about maintaining a facade and just surviving.

Okay, so picture this: Polina, desperate to get some buzz for her show, lets this totally clueless, loudmouth art influencer, Dalton Hardberry (played by Zach Galifianakis, naturally), have a sneak peek. He’s busy putting down her gallery and basically saying she’s only afloat because of her ex, when he trips over a puddle – seriously, no warning cones! – and ends up skewered on one of Stella’s sculptures. It’s this huge, ridiculously pointy thing modeled after the tool Stella’s dad used to, uh, castrate farm animals. It’s awful, but Polina, quick on her feet, pretends the whole thing is part of the art. She renames it ‘Emasculator,’ and boom – the exhibit goes viral! The only problem? She’s got about six hours before things start to…decompose. Talk about pressure!

With growing crowds admiring the bold new artwork, Polina, Kiki, Stella, and Kiki’s aunt Marianne Gorman – a savvy art curator played by Catherine Zeta-Jones – try to untangle the complicated situation. The performances become increasingly over-the-top as each actor tries to outdo the others, but Daniel Brühl might steal the show. He plays a wealthy art collector who’s desperate to seem trendy and is easily swayed by Marianne and other smooth-talking figures in the art world. Marianne herself describes the artwork as a thought-provoking commentary on masculinity and power, knowing it will appeal to certain egos.

While The Gallerist isn’t necessarily realistic, the director and actors create a world that’s surprisingly easy to get lost in. The humor gets increasingly absurd and fast-paced as the movie progresses. The camera follows a group of art-world characters—each evolving from genuine art lover to influential figure—as they desperately try to get rid of a bizarre and failing artwork that’s somehow becoming more valuable and attracting more attention. The actors deliver incredibly physical performances; Portman appears constantly on the brink of exhaustion, and Ortega moves with cartoonish energy—made even more striking by their towering heels. Zeta-Jones, however, maintains an air of graceful confidence, even when things are at their worst.

“The Gallerist” might not appeal to everyone – some critics I spoke with after the Sundance screening disliked it – but I really enjoyed it. I was captivated by its bright, energetic style, its strangely unsettling mood, and its fast pace. It’s been six years since the director made “Birds of Prey,” which did okay with audiences but didn’t make much money, for the old DC movie universe. This new film is much smaller and more independent, but it feels expertly made, and you can tell the director knows what they’re doing.

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2026-01-26 21:01