Olivia Wilde's daring new thriller electrifies Sundance with a twisted love story

When the lights dimmed in the packed theater, a hush fell over the crowd, broken only by the low thrum of the score. Olivia Wilde stepped onto the screen as a painter whose confidence is as striking as the canvases she creates, and the audience was drawn into a world where desire is both weapon and refuge. The film unspools in the cramped, dimly lit backroom of an avant-garde gallery, where Wilde's character meets her assistant, a figure whose quiet devotion masks a hunger for control. Their connection spirals into a push-and-pull of pleasure and pain, a choreography that feels less like a plot and more like an intimate dance. As the camera lingers on brushstrokes and bruised skin alike, the boundary between art and obsession blurs, leaving viewers to question where the performance ends and the real game begins. By the final frame, the room erupts in a mixture of gasps and applause, a testament to a film that dared to make sensuality raw, unsettling, and undeniably compelling.