QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN
Voice actor Isabel (Mia Maestro) and musician Elliott (Lee Pace) engage in a sexually explicit and very awkward conversation. He is the guru-like lead singer and songwriter – though he gives the second credit to his withdrawn composer-brother Ronnie (Philip Ettinger) – of an electronic rock band called Likeliness Increases. The name is one of many hints to the strange events of the muddy plot.
Even more significant are the droning synthesiser songs. Their lyrics are filled with pretentious references to death, passion and resurrection. They have an almost hypnotic influence on their cult fanbase. Among them is Isabel’s friend Alice (Gwendoline Christie) who takes her to a concert. One might ponder if this was part of a larger plan, yet that never comes full circle. This murky musical mystery has countless twists, and their resolution remains frustratingly opaque. Everyone in the concert audience seems enthralled by Elliott’s poetry-slam-like vocalisation, apart from Isabel. However, she is clearly physically interested in Elliott whom she met coincidentally – or fatefully? – on a hike in a cave. And it gets weirder from there.
Seduced by his post-concert dirty talk, Isabel starts an affair with Elliott. He is turned on by her being visibly pregnant, she is turned on by sucking his smelly feet. All these aspects are verbally stated. Isabel’s philandering husband Ted (a bland part, giving Rupert Friend little to do) wouldn’t care about her tryst. What seems like a setup for a vintage-style erotic thriller where one person becomes dangerously jealous, veers into a half baked metaphysical allegory. First Elliot disappears. Then Isabel’s motherhood plans go awry. This drives the protagonist, who suffered a family tragedy in the past, literally over the edge.
Elliot’s followers believe he was reborn in Isabel and she must now finish his long-awaited final album. These fans are so serious about their music that they send late night harlequin messengers quoting Nine Inch Nails songs in order to make their point. Maestro performance is very earnest. Se gives her character more credibility than the absurd actions warrant. Castro’s use of genre tropes in order to underline Isabel’s growing anxiety makes for some nice chills. Barton Cortright’s cinematography drenches the scenery in a soft colour palette of autumnal green, brown and burgundy.
But acting and imagery can’t make up for the plot’s silliness and sexism. The oversimplified mysticism, the borderline absurdist dialogue and the psychoanalytical subtext possess a pseudo-Lynchian vibe. Castro, though, seems to be more after comparisons with Hitchcock – that’s perhaps why Isabel names the British filmmaker as her mother’s favourite director. The personal trauma she casually reveals is infused with a faux-feminist message. Despite the experimental soundbites, the outcome is more antiquated than avant-garde.
After this Death just premiered in a Special Gala event at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
