Mag­ic Farm review – Amalia Ulman has plen­ty up her sleeve

How do you fol­low up an acclaimed debut? Amalia Ulman’s answer is to com­mit to satir­i­cal absur­dism whole­heart­ed­ly. Fol­low­ing her 2021 moth­er-daugh­ter com­e­dy El Plan­e­ta, Ulman’s Mag­ic Farm sees the direc­tor return to her birth­place of north­ern Argenti­na for a far­ci­cal tale of a self-absorbed VICE-esque film crew descend­ing on a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty to pro­file a local, bun­ny-ear-wear­ing musi­cian. How­ev­er, they soon realise they’re in the wrong coun­try (it didn’t occur to their pro­duc­er that there’s more than one San Cristo­bal) and must scram­ble to amend their cat­a­stroph­ic error.

Cast­ing her­self as Span­ish-speak­ing Ele­na, Ulman’s char­ac­ter stands apart from the out­siders as a native speak­er. She’s repeat­ed­ly caught in the mid­dle, trans­lat­ing for the kind-heart­ed locals and the crew as they fab­ri­cate a viral trend to save the doc­u­men­tary. Ele­na is part of the junior crew mem­bers along­side wannabe cow­boy Justin (Joe Apol­lo­nio) and Alex Wolff’s whiny Jeff ​“schem­ing lit­tle bitch” Berg­er who brings bound­less phys­i­cal com­e­dy, sprawl­ing over every soft sur­face and cow­er­ing in cor­ners in an attempt to escape the mess he’s got him­self in. Then there’s appre­hen­sive TV host Edna (Chloë Sevi­gny) and her hus­band and pro­duc­er (Simon Rex).

Though Rex and Sevigny’s appear­ances are sparse, Ulman has plen­ty up her sleeve with the younger trio hold­ing down the film’s diverg­ing sub­plots of a secret preg­nan­cy, a sex­u­al harass­ment scan­dal and the assem­bly of locals into a fic­tion­al reli­gious cult. The film’s abstract sense of humour nat­u­ral­ly stems from the lat­ter and the sur­re­al sit­u­a­tions that arise. Cumbia music and Latin Amer­i­can cul­tur­al nuances sprout from Ulman’s con­nec­tion to the coun­try and, like her char­ac­ter, her direc­to­r­i­al voice guides view­ers, trans­lat­ing as she goes but refus­ing to spoon-feed easy answers.

One of Mag­ic Farm​’s most com­pelling nar­ra­tive branch­es is an omnipresent health cri­sis that looms over the film. Locals, includ­ing a bemused hos­tel man­ag­er (Guiller­mo Jacubow­icz) and acci­den­tal doc­u­men­tary sav­iour Popa (Vale­ria Lois), mur­mur about undrink­able tap water and radio debates on the cor­re­la­tion between repro­duc­tive dis­or­ders and the tox­ic her­bi­cides sprayed on fields. This is the real sto­ry, one that they can’t (or refuse to) see. The igno­rant Amer­i­can arche­type is prod­ded play­ful­ly, but there’s a wider com­ment here about how press­ing sto­ries can eas­i­ly fly under the radar.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Car­los Rigo Bel­lver tracks these bum­bling Amer­i­cans down wind­ing dirt roads and through colour­ful homes, chron­i­cling their sur­re­al expe­di­tion with equal­ly hyp­no­tis­ing imagery. Ulman’s per­for­mance art back­ground informs the film’s opti­cal odd­i­ties, like a 360-degree cam­era, a visu­al dis­tor­tion that places char­ac­ters on a plan­et of her own cre­ation, a blurred fish-eye effect and a ​‘dog cam’ GoPro. Like a visu­al awak­en­ing, these vibrant images inter­rupt when the script veers towards con­ven­tion. Mag­ic Farm may not be a blan­ket crowd pleas­er, but Ulman’s smart writ­ing lands in a deeply opti­mistic place about the pure mag­ic of human connection.

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