Blue Ruin

Kunzru (Red Pill) takes on the excessive and rapacious tendencies of the art world in his dazzling latest. Jay, a 40-something undocumented performance artist from India, left behind the competitive milieu of his London art school after becoming disillusioned, and has supported himself with various manual labor jobs. Now, during the first summer of the Covid-19 pandemic, he lives in his car and delivers groceries in Upstate New York. The gig brings him to the home of his ex-girlfriend Alice and his former best friend Rob, whom Alice left him for 20 years earlier in London. Fatigued and beleaguered by brain fog two months after getting Covid, Jay cautiously reenters his old friends’ lives. Alice, stuck managing Rob’s studio, is reminded of the freer life she used to lead with Jay, while Rob, a successful painter, reveals himself to be a consummate art monster, cheating on Alice and spending too much of their money on lavish, boozy parties. When Rob’s gallerist, Marshal, learns of Jay’s long-running self-documentation project, Fugue, he’s desperate to work with the performance artist. If Jay doesn’t let his life’s work be documented, Marshal argues, “It will slip away into nothingness [and] you’re just some guy who left the art world.” The gripping tension between Jay and the rest of the cast gives way in the graceful final scene to a feeling as melancholy as watching a beloved painting get auctioned off in a beige room at Sotheby’s. This is immensely satisfying. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (May)