Slamdance In Review: Santa Zeta, Snowland, Tony Odyssey
Notable entries from the L.A.-based independent film festival.
For more info on Slamdance, click this.
SANTA ZETA [Spain]
A stylish, vibey thriller blending influences from Tarantino to Korine, Antonio Muñoz de Mesa’s Santa Zeta luxuriates in the destination spots where fun rules and truth stays just out of reach. It’s a lot on first blush. The film frequently overuses the tools at its disposal — like slow motion, which constantly edges the suspense of its multiple chapters toward underwhelming climaxes — but these many (many) indulgences serve a purpose. Keep watching. There’s more meat on the bone here than its lean premise suggests.
That premise, by the way: Spanish travel influencer Zeta (a whirlwind Nekane Otxoa) uses her profile as cover to hunt pedophiles across the globe. Rather than indulge in the salacious brutality similar films gleefully lean on, the film dwells in weightier stuff. Its thematic muscle trains on the treachery of memory, interrogating how a person’s Whole Deal hinges on a single, devastating lie. As writer, director, and editor, De Mesa takes the long road to his ruminative turns, letting sequences coast at a casual stroll that creates drag during his ferocious first half, where Zeta farms aura for imaginary cameras while her bewildered targets look on. All her glittering vigilantism initially plays like The Punisher gone r/ImTheMainCharacter, leaning too hard on mordant humor and chronic online-isms, as in Zeta’s fruitless hunt for Miley Cyrus’s nonexistent Walk of Fame star, a stretched-out gag that underscores the extent of her influencer messiness; earlier, we watched her purloin a fur coat in Seoul.
While Santa Zeta gets its points across in big, glitzy letters, the less busy latter half mines richer ore. We follow our narrator — who grows more unreliable as her story goes on — toward a conclusion rendered in vivid, expertly shot sequences that clash productively with the film’s more harrowing subject matter. One standout bit juxtaposes Zeta filming a food truck chef crafting an exquisite fish tostada with glimpses of a heinous L.A. predator’s morning routine, an impressive sequence that encourages closer inspection as small details — like a pill Zeta should be taking but isn’t — gain mounting significance.
As the meaning behind her righteous killing spree nears, the film abruptly concludes in a messier and quicker manner than its measured complexity and length would suggest. Catharsis suffers. Yet, that emotional ambiguity, like everything else about Santa Zeta, feels intentional: the ugliness Zeta confronts, her hostility and rage, can finally exhale into an unsettling, hard-won freedom. Whether we accept her journey at face value is our problem, not hers.
7 / 10
Santa Zeta premiered on February 21 at the Landmark Sunset Hollywood Theater 4. For more info, click this.
Written and directed by Antonio Muñoz de Mesa.
Starring Nekane Otxoa, Africa Giron, Arlette Torres, Ivan Villanueva, Darci L. Strother, Izoko, and Jordi Monedero.
117 mins. / Unrated. Zeta travels inward to address horrific memories.
SNOWLAND [USA]
Sometimes a documentary brings me into another person’s world with such disarming tenderness that I’m humbled by the privilege. Such was my experience watching Jill Orschel’s Snowland, a beautiful, affirming film about perseverance, creativity, and the inner life of people — specifically, the life of writer, women’s rights advocate, and artist Cora Lee Witt, a singular person for whom I want nothing but the absolute best.
Years ago, Cora (pen name “C. Raven”) broke away from her husband and the death-grip of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, setting in motion a social upheaval that reverberates through her community to this day. From the abuse, terror, and psychic scars she endured as a child bride, she conjured “Snowland,” a glacial fantasy realm of cosmic serenity populated by characters who reflect the many facets of her inner light. Orschel follows Cora as she tries to sell her Snowland series to a willing producer — her goal is to build a family dream house from the proceeds — as her steadfast daughter Becca begins her own creative awakening, a journey that inevitably leads her outward from the mother she reveres.
Through her story’s seemingly never-ending uncertainty and change, Cora’s strength endures, and Orschel captures it beautifully. The director limns the harsher edges of Witt’s history through lush stop-motion sequences pulled from her fae-inflected artwork (realized by Park City artist Bridey Bush), which animate the reveries that seem to always flicker just behind Witt’s gaze. The effect is an awesome, transporting reminder of how strength is derived from dreams, how a person can endure so much darkness that their continued survival feels like magic. In Snowland, Cora’s light persists. It shimmers.
9 / 10
Snowland premiered on February 20 at the Summer Chastant and David Pierce Theater. For more info, click this. And this.
Directed by Jill Orschel.
90 mins. / Unrated. Addresses sexual assault and child abuse.
TONY ODYSSEY [Brazil]
Like a smack to the face, Thales Banzai’s Tony Odyssey is a jolt of psychotropic energy that’s easy to love and hard to shake. It asks the heavy questions that surface when your brain is goofed out on substances, but this ain’t dorm room philosophizing; it plays more like future-shock Fellini, or techno-wired Trial-era Welles. With restless invention and a manic charge, Banzai pulls us into the headspace of Tony (Kelson Succi) and Ivy (Iraci Estrella), two low-rent criminals fresh off the biggest score of their lives and ready to celebrate. The frenzied journey that follows, refracted through feverish camera tricks and audio-visual distortion, is intoxicating. This is the kick in the teeth I was hoping for from this year’s Slamdance.
I want to bang on about its ideas and visuals, but first, the story. We meet Tony as he grinds away at a bar of the menacing Mr. Casio (Sandro Guerra), working off the bad kind of debt that never gets paid. Fate tips in his favor when, paired with his partner-in-crime Ivy, the duo pilfers a pouch of black-tar lysergic drugs, making good their escape as Casio swears vengeance. They cook up a batch, drop the illicit elixir into each other’s eyes, and their odyssey kicks off in earnest.
Elevating everything is Succi’s endlessly thoughtful screenplay, which pivots from flights of fancy (a kite that yanks Tony into the sky) to prickly debates about the emptiness of contemporary art, as provided by a contrarian old-head at a local café. In Banzai, Succi has found his creative match; the former’s surrealism blends with the latter’s metatextualism, creating a vivid, playful energy that hangs in there even as the film flirts with preciousness. One precarious example: “What about Brazilian cinema?” a futuristic hipster asks the old man, at which point Banzai lets the boom mic poke into the frame, his slate clapping cut on this marvelous tirade. The bit lands even as the filmmakers yank the rug out from under us. Neat trick.
This discussion of art permeates the film and speaks to generational and cultural upheaval. It draws a line between the dusty contrarians whose best days are behind them and the youthful voyagers who venture forth into their wide-open futures. That friction of perception and art makes far more sparks in Tony Odyssey than its funky crime caper antics, but that’s part of its appeal. And Banzai doesn’t waste a frame as Succi lets loose his blistering, sweat-slick fever dream on us. Tony’s message lands with eye-widening clarity: if you want more from life, go look for it — but do it with everything you are. If that makes sense, Tony Odyssey will knock you flat. I’m still on the floor.
9 / 10
Tony Odyssey premiered on February 23 at the Summer Chastant and David Pierce Theater. For more info, click this.
Directed by Thales Banzai.
Written by Kelson Succi.
Starring Kelson Succi, Iraci Estrela, Sandro Guerra, Antônio Pitanga, Leci Brandão, Teuda Bara, Luiz Bertazzo, and Chico César.
105 mins. / Unrated. Tony takes a porno detour midway through the film.
For more info on Slamdance, click this.