The Swedish filmmaker Thelin knows her era and the art world’s most absurd manifestations all too well. Perhaps that is why she brings together the erotic dynamite of Heated Rivalry (2025–) with the dark humour of Östlund’s The Square (2017), resulting in a chamber drama about three characters, fluid identities, sexuality and its exploitation. The film plunges the viewer into 100 minutes of secondhand embarrassment and a provocative thought experiment. 

She is a cleaner longing for a more exciting life. While cleaning the mansion of Annika Franke, a contemporary art gallerist and art benefactor, she becomes fascinated by her employer’s lifestyle and influence. When Annika leaves for New York, the cleaner decides to pass herself off as her. Inviting two art students she has recently met to the house, she sets in motion a tense triangle of lies in which no one’s motives or identity are entirely clear. The young woman takes a liking to the game, even if she has nothing to really offer the artists.

How long can the protagonist keep up with constructing a persona that is not her own? In her feature debut, Thelin takes the small white lie and escalates it into something far more grandiose, continuing the tradition of social critique associated with Lanthimos, early Polanski and other masters of cinema. Her satire sharply exposes the egomania and hierarchy of the art world – an elitist universe in which those complicit in the system reinforce its power structures, selling their dreams even when they border on the ridiculous (and the pathetic). Yes, we are ready to believe any lie if it promises us the success we crave, and Swedish actress Carla Sehn plays this role to perfection, portraying a protagonist whose real name we soon forget.