Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

In Los Angeles, an art gallery employee discovers an impressive collection of paintings in the home of a deceased neighbour. She sees this as an opportunity to shake up her environment and make money, without realising that she is also unleashing a supernatural force…

So, if anything, you have to wait more than forty minutes to see the first supernatural elements. This isn’t a film with a violent intro that sets the tone. In fact, for quite a while, I wondered where the film was going. I wondered if it had a complex beginning that would lead to a ridiculous ending…

The fact is, I’m sure we see the most important parts in the trailer. The rest is just pretentious chatter in a museum or elsewhere. Very talkative, even! So much so that we lose sight of the essentials.

It’s a rather unusual film, with an excellent, flawless cast, but the characters are really not very engaging. Art is supposed to be showcased, but I saw so much of it that very little stuck with me. Dan Gilroy had already made a biting noir thriller about sleazy journalism. Here, he has made a horror film about highbrow contemporary art, released on Netflix, with a surreal plot exploring the art world. Toni Collette plays Gretchen, an art critic, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Morf Vandewalt, an influential art critic, and John Malkovich plays Piers, a gallery owner, respectively.

Rene Russo is also in the film… but, even though she’s great here, I’ve never been very impressed by her. Sure, she’s very beautiful, but I don’t think that makes her an incredible actress.

I appreciate Billy Magnussen’s charisma, but we don’t see much of him here.

Zawe Ashton is a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know her before this film. Or rather, she hadn’t really made an impression on me, especially since she starred in The Marvels (2023), which is undoubtedly one of the worst superhero films ever made. I think she’s married to the excellent Tom Hiddleston, if I’m not mistaken.

That said, she will be considered by some to be the only casting mistake by those who didn’t understand her character. Apparently, she was also in another film I didn’t like, Nocturnal Animals (2016), which also starred Gyllenhaal.

The same goes for Natalia Dyer, whose character is excellent! She is also a nice surprise, but I have never seen her other successes such as the series Stranger Things or films such as After Darkness or Things Heard & Seen. This actress, best known for her series, has starred in feature films, short films, appeared in a music video, and lent her voice to a video game character. In short!

This film has also been classified as a thriller, even though it has very little suspense! This has become commonplace. One thing is certain: it is the opposite of a horror thriller for teenagers in search of thrills.

I am a great art lover, but we learn nothing about the art world, except for competition between companies, and even that is very poorly covered. I hate the snobbery that can accompany this milieu. Velvet Buzzsaw takes potshots at everything: self-important artists, arrogant and all-powerful critics, ambitious gallery owners, speculation, pretensions and conflicts of interest at every level. The problem is that this criticism is rather superficial.

‘What makes something valuable is its rarity. Putting all your diamonds on the market makes them worthless.’ I find it sad and rather awful to have to bow to rules all the time, rather than simply observing beauty without necessarily thinking about money. But let’s hope we don’t have to wait centuries for capitalism to finally collapse!

The film shows a lack of courage and obvious hypocrisy. Bowing down, even kneeling before someone, only to then take out your frustration on those weaker than yourself… it’s common and truly pathetic. You could say it’s very human if you admit that humans have more flaws than qualities.

“The value of our friends only becomes apparent when it is too late.” I appreciate that this film makes this important point.

In short: I didn’t love it. It was still watchable, though. There are some very good scenes. There are a lot of characters, and perhaps their relationships aren’t always obvious. It would be interesting to watch it a second time, but not necessarily necessary. It’s clearly not a film you’d want to watch over and over again. The direction is good, but nothing extraordinary either.

In fact, I expected more. Everything could have been better. With an idea like this, you can do so much more, go so much further. The Night at the Museum trilogy (2006–2014) fully exploited the concept of art coming to life, statues moving, paintings talking… but it was more in the form of comedy. I don’t know if any horror films have exploited this theme to the same extent. Either my memory is playing tricks on me, or I’ve never really seen any, but I’d be very interested.

It’s as if the film wanted to remain serious and not become too unrealistic. But that doesn’t hold water, because in any case, that plan falls apart after a while. The further we go, the more we sink into exaggeration.

One might easily wonder what Malkovich is doing in this film. He’s really not shown to his best advantage. The end credits show him making art in the sand, alone on a beach. A great moment!

A spectacular failure from the director of Nightcrawler (2014), already with Rene Russo & Jake Gyllenhaal? Admittedly, the story doesn’t amount to much, each scene can seem uninteresting and the narrative line is very vague. But I appreciate the fact that there is no gore, no torture, no ultra-disturbing content. That’s why I don’t hate this film and even have a certain respect for it. But, indeed, it tries to convey a clumsy message, with moments that are normally horrific or horrific moments placed at random and not at all scary, but rather ridiculous.