The
oeuvre of late, undiscovered outsider artist Ventril Dease could be considered
the Necronomicon of oil paintings.
They have a rather odd effect on
those who view them. It is even worse for those who try to profit from them. The
exploitative sharks of the fine art world are in for some EC Comics-style karma
in Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw, which
premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Ventril
Dease is dead and nobody really noticed, until it was time to clear out the
hundreds of tormented paintings he left behind. Then they came to the attention
of his neighbor, Josephine, an aspiring gallerist, who immediately recognizes the
collection as a potential blockbuster. Around that time, she conveniently
starts sleeping with pompous art critic Morf Vandewalt, who is even more struck
by Dease’s twisted vision. Soon, the entire art world is desperate to get their
hands on Dease’s work, especially Josephine’s former boss (and Vandewalt’s
bestie), Rhodora Haze, who once played in a punk band called “Velvet Buzzsaw”
during her wild youth, thereby explaining the cryptic title, as well as her
fiercest rival, Ricky Blaine.
Of
course, the various grasping players start dropping like flies, under decidedly
sinister circumstances. Vandewalt, who negotiated himself gigs as Dease’s
official biographer and author of the exhibit catalogue, starts having weird
visions worthy of a twisted Dease painting. Although his paranoia is definitely
galloping unfettered, the critic is not necessarily wrong when he warns the
paintings are exerting a malevolent, uncanny influence on their beholders.
Arguably,
Buzzsaw is a contemporary cousin to
Roger Corman’s classic Bucket of Blood,
chronicling the rise and fall of artist Walter Paisley, whose sculptures look
so realistic, because he embeds dead people inside them. Surprisingly, Buzzsaw is nearly as campy. It also has
a roughly comparable body count.
It
is not exactly what we would have expected from the director and two leads of Nightcrawler, but it is still fun the watch
the game, scenery-chewing cast preen about the Miami Beach Art Basel. This is a
case of beautiful people absolutely skewering beautiful people of an even more
rarified strata.
Of
course, when it comes to acidic snark, nobody can top Toni Collette as
Gretchen, a spectacularly ruthless museum agent. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Vandewalt is
an utterly un-self-aware uber-twit who puts Bertie Wooster to shame. He is a self-important
dolt, but he has his principles, which makes him strangely interesting. Rene
Russo is flamboyantly charismatic as Haze, the cynical game-player. John Malkovich
adds his usual sly élan as Piers, a superstar artist, but this time around, he
can’t match Collette’s caustic energy.
