Vel­vet Buzzsaw

It’s dif­fi­cult to talk about Dan Gilroy’s Vel­vet Buz­z­saw with­out mak­ing some sort of com­par­i­son to Ruben Ostlund’s 2017 Palme d’Or win­ner, The Square. Both films are imbued with sur­re­al­ism, social com­men­tary and a cast of bizarre char­ac­ters inhab­it­ing the upper ech­e­lons of the fine art world; and both satirise the pom­pos­i­ty of this par­tic­u­lar form of high cul­ture, with which most peo­ple will only ever have a pass­ing association.

Per­haps it’s the inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of fine art that makes it such a play­ground for par­o­dy, but satire is only real­ly suc­cess if it actu­al­ly has some crit­i­cal val­ue. Vel­vet Buz­z­saw is sore­ly lack­ing in that.

Where Ostlund has Claes Bang, Dominic West and Elis­a­beth Moss, Dan Gilroy has a con­sid­er­ably more stacked cast, com­prised of key play­ers Jake Gyl­len­haal and Rene Rus­so (who last worked with Gilroy on Night­crawler), Zawe Ash­ton, Toni Col­lette, Dav­eed Dig­gs, John Malkovich and Bil­ly Mag­nussen. Gyl­len­haal plays eccen­tric art crit­ic Morf Van­de­walt, a main­stay of the Los Ange­les art scene, where he fre­quent­ly works with gallery own­er Rhodo­ra Haze (Rus­so) and muse­um cura­tor Gretchen (Col­lette).

Artists on the scene include Piers (Malkovich) and new­com­er Dam­r­ish (Dig­gs), but when Haze’s assis­tant Josephi­na (Ash­ton) comes across a haunt­ing col­lec­tion of paint­ings cre­at­ed by a recent­ly-deceased neigh­bour, her dis­cov­ery turns their art scene upside down, and sin­is­ter events begin to unfold around them.

On the sur­face, Vel­vet Buz­z­saw has so much going for it, which makes it all the more dis­ap­point­ing that Gilroy’s film nev­er real­ly man­ages to find its stride. With so many mov­ing parts in the cast alone, it’s dif­fi­cult for any­one to find breath­ing room, and most of the char­ac­ters nev­er tran­scend the stereo­types on which they are seem­ing­ly based – Gyllenhaal’s camp crit­ic, Collette’s insuf­fer­able cura­tor, even Malkovich’s aus­tere artist.

The car­toon­ish vio­lence that comes lat­er wouldn’t pass muster in even the most recent Final Des­ti­na­tion sequels (with one scene involv­ing mon­keys a notable excep­tion) and flour­ish­es such as the preva­lence of vap­ing, hair­less cats, and Air­pods feel like noth­ing more than indi­ca­tors of con­tempt for the nouveau-riche.

It’s not enough to just point out the inher­ent ridicu­lous­ness of the rack­et that is the fine art world, as many would see that as a giv­en already. Gilroy does try to explore the idea of appro­pri­at­ed art and in turn how much one puts of them­selves into their work, but it’s all paint­ed with too broad a brush stroke to real­ly pay off. As demon­strat­ed with Night­crawler and his fol­low-up Roman J Israel, Esq, Gilroy is at his best when focus­ing with laser-pre­ci­sion on one fas­ci­nat­ing character.

Vel­vet Buz­z­saw feels like a real missed oppor­tu­ni­ty for Gilroy to bring his acer­bic wit to the art world, too pol­ished to pass into B‑movie ter­ri­to­ry but not inter­est­ing enough to be tru­ly mem­o­rable. Iron­i­cal­ly, per­haps he just need­ed to curate the whole show a lit­tle better.