The second half of my Sundance screenings were all “encore screenings”, ticketed for a 24-hour viewing window starting 2 days after their premieres.
In The Earth (2020 | United Kingdom | 107 minutes | Ben Wheatley)
Ben Wheatley delivers another solid entry into the canon of British folk horror. Scientist Martin (Joel Fry) and park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia) embark on a mission to check on a colleague who’s been out of contact embedded in a remote site deep in the forest. But who and what they encounter out there pushes events out of the realm of science and into the mystical, as things go from atmospheric to trippy to witchy and nightmarish. Shades of Midsommar (another film featuring Ellora Torchia) collide with the vibes of Apostle or The Wicker Man, or Wheatley’s own A Field In England – helped along by Clint Mansell’s score, which combines synthetic and acoustic elements alongside recordings of sounds emitted by plants themselves.
This is another film that doesn’t hide that it was created during the time of covid (and in fact was the first new production in England to shoot once their initial lockdown lifted last summer), but rather makes hay of that fact by setting the story within its own global pandemic.
Fry’s comedic acting background and deadpan delivery style suits Wheatley’s trademark combination of horror and sharp laughs quite well, bringing just the right dose of levity to buoy an otherwise weighty and dreamy narrative, and saving it from tipping into self-seriousness.
Luckily, NEON was involved in financing from the start, so unlike Wheatley’s well-received (by those lucky enough to catch it) Happy New Year, Colin Burstead, US distribution is sure to follow this film’s festival run.
Strawberry Mansion (2020 | USA | 90 minutes | Kentucker Audley & Albert Birney)
Kentucker Audley, last seen in Amy Seimetz’s superb She Dies Tomorrow, and Albert Birney, his co-director of 2017’s Sylvio, have created an entirely new dream-logic world to get lost in. Alongside co-writing and co-directing, Audley stars in this mind-melting Möbius strip of a narrative as James Preble, a near-future tax auditor who specializes in the taxes levied on items that show up on people’s dreams. His newest subject is Bella, an elderly woman played by Penny Fuller, whose home is packed to the gills with un-audited VHS tapes of years’ worth of her recorded dreams.
As Preble dives deeper into Bella’s subconscious, reality starts to fall apart and nothing turns out to be as it seems. Linas Phillips, who also helped in the initial stages of refining the script, shows up as a smarmy dreamscape salesman. Papier-mâché costumes, stop-motion effects, a Narnia-like dive from the back of a closet into the ocean, a naval ship staffed by mice, and a VHS-tape ghillie suit all come into play as well, in this world of unbridled imagination that’s anchored by a sincere quest for connection and self-expression. It’s gorgeously stylized in a way that could be described as “Michel Gondry meets Tim Burton”. Shot digitally but transferred to 16mm for the film grain effect, and with music by Dan Deacon to help underscore its otherworldliness, this film is an escape into another universe altogether.
Together Together (2020 | USA | 90 minutes | Nikole Beckwith)
A charming indie dramedy in which a 26-year-old woman (Patti Harrison) is hired as a pregnancy surrogate for a single 40-something man (Ed Helms), and over the course of the pregnancy, they become friends. That’s it, that’s the whole plot of this movie – but it’s sweet and lovely in a pretty special way.
Harrison, best known previously as a stand-up comic or a supporting cast member of shows like Shrill and Search Party, really gets to stretch and show off her dramatic chops in an impressive way here. It’s an interesting and very cool shift that she’s a trans actress playing an explicitly cisgender character, in a world where we’re exponentially more likely to see the opposite, and she does it with a gorgeous amount of depth and confidence. Helms brings the vulnerability and awkward charm of his best work, and they’re both supported by an incredible comedic ensemble including Tig Notaro, Julio Torres, Jo Firestone, and Sufe Bradshaw.
The film puts forth the idea that a relationship can be temporary and platonic, and still be meaningful, legitimate, worth celebrating, and real – and also that it’s not weird for a man to have a biological clock and a desire to have a child, whether he’s partnered or not. It’s a rom-com after a fashion, with a few digs at and inversions of the works of Woody Allen along the way, and all while packaging these borderline-radical ideas in such a gentle and pleasant package as to feel irresistible.
(Header image courtesy of Sundance Institute)