The Patron

 The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. 

John Berger 

At first, it is hard not to think of Ruben Östlund’s The Square. As in the Swedish director’s cinema, the art world here becomes a laboratory for a social experiment, a space in which conventions, hierarchies and hypocrisies are exposed until the boundary between who we are and who we pretend to be becomes uncertain. But while Östlund often relies on provocation and the grotesque to unmask the contradictions of contemporary society, The Patron gradually takes a different direction, focusing on the construction of identity, manipulation and the impossibility of clearly distinguishing lies from truth. 

The protagonist, a cleaner brilliantly portrayed by Carla Sehn, with her simultaneously enchanted and almost deranged gaze, assumes the identity of a wealthy patron and discovers how prestige can depend not on who we are, but on what others believe they see. All it takes is to claim a different social position for other people’s perception to change: the same person, lacking authority when occupying a subordinate position, suddenly becomes worthy of attention when she appears to possess money and power. Identity thus reveals itself as a performance sustained by social recognition, while prestige emerges as a collective construction, as arbitrary as it is capable of producing real consequences. 

Money is what makes this metamorphosis possible. What matters is not merely the wealth one possesses, but the possibilities it promises: access, visibility, opportunity. 

In the art world, where financial backing can help determine the symbolic value of a work and its creator, a patron is not simply someone who provides funding, but someone who can decide who deserves to be seen. Economic power is converted into the power to confer recognition, and recognition becomes a resource to be traded. 

Yet manipulation does not operate in only one direction. The two aspiring young artists are not passive victims of deception: they participate in the fiction because they want something in return. Their willingness is driven by self-interest, by the hope of finding someone who can advance their careers, by the possibility of turning the encounter into an opportunity. It is precisely this active participation that makes the game more ambiguous: those who are deceived contribute to the construction of the deception when they need to believe in it. The parties sustain each other for as long as the fiction meets everyone's expectations. 

But what happens when reality contradicts what each person expected to gain? The apparent naivety and gentleness of the two young people can undergo a radical transformation, revealing a desire for domination that had previously remained invisible. Violence is not necessarily the opposite of docility: it can emerge when there is no longer any advantage in being docile. The film thus undermines any reassuring correspondence between appearance and character, revealing how fragile our attempts to assign others a stable identity on the basis of their behaviour really are. 

Art is the device through which this instability takes shape. It is not merely the setting for the story, but a metaphor for human relationships: just as a work of art can become an object of investment, evaluation and appropriation, so a person can become an instrument for someone else’s ends. In both cases, value cannot be separated from the power relations through which it is produced and recognised. 

In this sense, the line “I want to exhibit you” takes on a meaning that extends beyond its artistic reference. To exhibit means to make visible, to place something before an audience, to assign it a place within a representation. But it also means to expose, to lay bare, to turn someone into an object. Those who intend to use others may unknowingly find themselves in the same position. The woman who believes she controls the scene risks becoming the very thing put on display: the subject of manipulation becomes its object, and the boundary between those who exercise power and those who submit to it dissolves. 

This is where The Patron finds its most compelling core. It does not merely show how easy it is to lie, but how human relationships can be organised around shared representations sustained by mutual interests. Anyone can become a means, an instrument or an end; anyone can use others while simultaneously making themselves available to be used. Lies are not merely an interference with reality: they become a possibility inherent in relationships, especially when the desire to gain something makes it convenient to suspend doubt. 

The problem, then, is not simply to establish who is telling the truth, but to understand how far the truth can actually be known. Intentions remain opaque, identities also depend on the gaze of others, and appearances can be overturned when interests change. What seems authentic may be an act, what appears to be naivety may conceal calculation, and what presents itself as power may depend entirely on the credulity of those who recognise it. 

If The Square called moral and social conventions into question through paradox and provocation, The Patron gradually shifts the focus towards the very nature of representation: not only artistic representation, but the process through which each of us constructs a sense of self and interprets others. The game of roles does not merely falsify reality; it helps determine it. And when everyone has something to gain, truth ceases to be a position from which to judge others and becomes the unstable ground on which each person seeks to assert their own.