Cathy Yan's new black comedy caper *The Gallerist*, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, follows Miami-based dealer Polina Polinski (Natalie Portman) as she tries to sell a corpse impaled on a sculpture during Art Basel Miami Beach. The film, co-written by Yan and James Pedersen, features a cast including Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Zach Galifianakis, Jenna Ortega, Charli xcx, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and leans heavily on art-world stereotypes for its farcical humor.
The film matters because it reflects and amplifies popular perceptions of the contemporary art market as a realm of greed, exploitation, and moral vacuity, where anything—including a dead body—can be marketed as art. By drawing on a tradition of art-world satire from Roger Corman's *A Bucket of Blood* to the present, *The Gallerist* offers a timely, if exaggerated, commentary on the commodification of art and the cynical behavior of dealers, collectors, and influencers.