Cathy Yan is back. And not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n
The filmmaker has returned to the Sundance Film Festival with \u201cThe Gallerist,\u201d a \u201cwickedly fun, corrosive satire of the contemporary art world\u201d (according to the Sundance program) that stars Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega and Zach Galifianakis, just in time for the festival\u2019s last hurrah in Park City, Utah.<\/p>\n
The last time she was at Sundance was 2018, with her debut feature \u201cDead Pigs.\u201d In between her visits to snowy Utah, Yan was recruited into the superhero industrial complex with Warner Bros. and DC Comics\u2019 \u201cBirds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),\u201d directed an episode of HBO\u2019s beloved \u201cSuccession,\u201d and developed several projects that never saw the light of day (A24\u2019s \u201cSour Heart\u201d and FilmNation\u2019s \u201cThe Freshening\u201d among them). <\/p>\n
That makes \u201cThe Gallerist\u2019s\u201d debut at Sundance both a homecoming and a sigh of relief, with one of the most exciting filmmakers working today finally back with a new feature.<\/p>\n
Yan told TheWrap\u2019s Sharon Waxman at Sundance that the idea for \u201cThe Gallerist\u201d came from her co-writer James Pedersen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately just gravitated towards it, because I did feel like it was such a fun, entertaining, funny, exciting way to explore some of these themes that I\u2019ve been obsessing over myself as a creative \u2013 these ideas around art and what is even considered art, and what is considered valuable in art and who gets to decide that and who tells those stories?\u201d Yan explained.<\/p>\n
The script, Yan said, hinged around a central idea \u2013 that there\u2019s a dead body that somebody is trying to sell as art. \u201cIt really just didn\u2019t seem that far-fetched, to be honest,\u201d said Yan. \u201cI love satire as a means to create social commentary in a fun and palatable way. And it seemed like a really great opportunity to explore those themes in an exciting cinematic way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Portman, who also produced \u201cThe Gallerist,\u201d plays the title character. \u201cShe is really trying to make her own way with this gallery, with this opening, and Kiki, who\u2019s Jenna\u2019s character, is her literal partner,\u201d Portman explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought was very apt and also very resonant \u2013 the slippery slope of compromise, of things happening, and then you\u2019d be like, I could do that,\u201d Portman said about what drew her to the project. \u201cAnd then a little more, another push, maybe I could do that too. And then things can quickly snowball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ortega described her character as Portman\u2019s assistant who has \u201cbeen working with her for a few years and grew up in the art world. Her aunt, who is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, is this incredible art dealer who\u2019s very, very esteemed, and has also just gotten out of prison. The years are going on, and the light is slowly starting to fade from [my character\u2019s] eyes I think she, while she glorifies and completely idolizes this craft and this field of work, it also very quickly gets not glamorous, and with what happens in this film, I think it rots away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film is set at \u00a0Art Basel Miami and the actors and filmmaker visited the Miami and Paris versions of the famous festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite foreign to me but now I feel like I know it very deeply,\u201d said Portman of the art world.<\/p>\n
The amazing cast of \u201cThe Gallerist\u201d also includes Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph, Sterling K. Brown, Daniel Br\u00fchl, Youssef Kerkour and Sundance 2026\u2019s \u201cit\u201d girl \u2013 Charli XCX. So how did Yan put together such a starry cast for her movie?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s the snowball effect \u2013 Natalie, you signed on first, and then Jenna, you were second. And then from there, it was like, come at us,\u201d said Yan. \u201cAnd then it becomes exciting, who else gets to be a part of this? And seeing partners and everyone levels up every time someone else comes in. I think part of it was not just me, but was the other cast. Daniel Br\u00fchl f was maybe the last to come on. And his role is not particularly large, but for such an established actor to even want to do something like that, I think it just speaks as much to Natalie and Jenna and the talent of everyone else before that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega on What Drew Them to Cathy Yan\u2019s Dark Satire \u2018The Gallerist\u2019<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cathy Yan is back. And not a moment too soon. The filmmaker has returned to the Sundance Film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[111654,49,48,179781,361,75,179782,29466,15061,79083,79081],"class_list":["post-431779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-art-world","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cathy-yan","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-gallerist","tag-jenna-ortega","tag-natalie-portman","tag-sundance-film-festival","tag-sundance-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}