Cast

Adam Goldberg, Marley Shelton, Eion Bailey, Lucy Punch, Vinnie Jones, Ptolemy Slocum, Michael Panes, Svetlana Efremova, Zak Orth

awards

Mannheim-Heidelberg IFF 2009 – special jury prize

Film description

In this intelligent and brooding satire on the state of contemporary art, close in style and cutting humor to Woody Allen films, Madeleine the owner of a Chelsea gallery gets involved with two brothers, painter Josh and musician Adrian. Madeleine is gorgeous, talented, and calculating: she knows a leading gallery cannot soil its walls with commercial work hung in hotel lobbies. Josh paints precisely such hack; his pastel abstractions sell, guaranteeing a great bottom line, but cannot hang in Madeleine’s gallery, which prides itself on cutting-edge art like the stuffed animals of Ray Barko (riff on Damien Hirst) or the conceptualist Monroe (parody of Martin Creed).

(Untitled) is one of the most overused titles in contemporary art. Jonathan Parker’s film is a close-up on the hermetic art world with its celebrities, bitter artists, collectors and galleries, and dialogues that are both humorous and apposite observations. Importantly, (Untitled) does not overdo it on the parody – it is scathing but not aggressive. The plot is light and story balanced – Parker denudes the art world’s lunacy and his own authentic fascination with that world.

Ewa Szabłowska