Straw­ber­ry Mansion

If the future’s going to be a dystopia, it won’t be all doom and gloom — bar­ring some major alter­ation in the laws of nature, for instance, the stan­dard fore­cast of rain and dour cloud cov­er would have to be bro­ken up by the occa­sion­al bout of sun­shine. In Straw­ber­ry Man­sion, an off­beat-to-the-point-of-unclas­si­fi­able new film from Ken­tuck­er Aud­ley and Albert Bir­ney, the joint writer-direc­tors eschew apoc­a­lyp­tic extremes in either direc­tion. Nei­ther waste­land nor ric­tus-smiled com­pul­so­ry par­adise, their take on the shape of things to come instead opts for a lo-fi, low-key mode not so far removed from the present.

In the film’s vision of 2035, the every­day bleak­ness will be plau­si­ble in con­cept yet fan­ci­ful in exe­cu­tion, a wea­ried nor­mal­cy accent­ed with pops of sur­re­al­ism. That’s the clos­est a crit­ic can come to pin­ning down the odd stew of atmos­phere into which James Pre­ble (Aud­ley) wan­ders, a pock­et of the bizarre com­bin­ing straight-faced banal­i­ty with the illog­ic of dreams. He’s an IRS audi­tor by trade, hav­ing trav­eled to the idyl­lic pock­et of woods — shot on loca­tion in Mary­land, though the title refers to a neigh­bor­hood and his­tor­i­cal site in Philadel­phia — occu­pied by the wiz­ened artist Ara­bel­la (gem of the stage Pen­ny Fuller) to col­lect what she owes.

In a dimen­sion that indulges its arts-and-crafts eccen­tric­i­ties while stop­ping just short of Miran­da July-lev­el pre­cious­ness, our dreams have become sub­ject to gov­ern­ment tax­a­tion, and Arabella’s been using a self-devised hel­met to cir­cum­vent these pay­ments. With equip­ment that like­wise looks like it’s been nicked from a Sovi­et space sta­tion, James enters her slum­ber as a holo­gram to take stock of what she’s skimped, even­tu­al­ly falling for the youth­ful men­tal image of Bel­la (Grace Glow­ic­ki) that he meets there.

The final act’s real­i­ty-bend­ing romance might ges­ture toward Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, and the daffy whim­sy in the imag­ined sequences cer­tain­ly owes a debt to Michel Gondry. But Aud­ley and Bir­ney have their own notions about the sin­is­ter creep­ing of com­mer­cial­ism, which forms the core of its anx­i­ety about what lies ahead. In James’ per­son­al dreams, an irri­tat­ing man (exper­i­men­tal the­atre stal­wart Linas Phillips) barks adver­tise­ments for tox­ic, syn­thet­ic prod­ucts like soda pop and spi­der-killer spray.

Though he’s an agent of the state, he’ll grow weary of the soul-dead­en­ing régime he enforces upon see­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a beau­ti­ful alter­na­tive, embod­ied by the DIY spir­it of this whol­ly inde­pen­dent oper­a­tion. The direc­to­r­i­al duo backs up the script’s empha­sis on puri­ty by apply­ing it to their home­made meth­ods, from the papi­er-mâché frog head rem­i­nis­cent of the wait­er from The For­bid­den Zone to the scav­enged doll­house used as a prac­ti­cal effect for a jer­ry-rigged estab­lish­ing shot. Trans­fer­ring their dig­i­tal footage to 16mm film after the fact gives a warm, earthy tex­ture to the oft-freaky pro­duc­tion design, remind­ing us of the human touch in a room seem­ing­ly slathered in Pepto-Bismol.

Though the sense of humor at play relies on the anti-com­e­dy of nau­se­at­ing rep­e­ti­tion both too heav­i­ly and not heav­i­ly enough — you either go the Tim and Eric route or you don’t — it’s bond­ed to a win­ning earnest­ness that brings clar­i­ty to the strokes of Dada. This isn’t weird­ness for its own sake, the tan­gents on the high seas or a desert­ed trop­i­cal island guid­ed by a child­like yen for adven­ture. In reject­ing the crass com­pro­mis­es of a cap­i­tal­ism-yoked world for an unspoiled oasis of the mind, the film returns to the inno­cence of infan­cy adults only re-expe­ri­ence in slum­ber, all tan­gled-up con­fu­sion and fear and won­der. In a time benumbed by the imper­a­tive to buy use­less shit, feel­ing any­thing counts as a victory.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.