Tribeca In Review: Underland, A Bright Future, Dragonfly
Three unique films that reveal the unusual and enlightening things that dwell just beneath the surface.
UNDERLAND
Underland, Robert Petit's gorgeous and perilously photographed documentary (co-written with Robert Macfarlane from his book), is a deceptively simple excavation of human curiosity. It asks much of the beyond and brings back only fragments, seized, with some luck, through the sheer tyranny of its subjects' ambition. Its descent is both literal and mythic, philosophical and physical, led by Sandra Hüller's spectral narration: "What is this strange song that calls us below? Why do we seek the void?"
The answer is obvious: to see what's down there. Underland doesn't argue. It opens at a crevasse beneath an ash tree in the Yucatán Peninsula, where archaeologist Fatima Tec Pool rappels into cenotes once revered by the Maya as pathways to Xibalba, the underworld. She notes they had only fire to light their way; she and her team have scanners, mapping equipment, and hammocks. Both seek the same knowledge, yet arrive at the same stone wall: what greets her are ancient handprints on cave walls, waving from history. So her work is dangerous, sure, but it connects her to her people, who braved these depths lit only by what was at hand. "They must have missed so much," she says with awe.
Petit cuts from Yucatán to Las Vegas, where Bradley Garrett, professional urban explorer and amateur philosopher of entropy, slinks through the storm drains beneath the Strip. He romanticizes them as "caves in the making," lingering over mold, graffiti, and refuse. The "Burrow Bible," a chart/chronicle of Garrett's journeys, is his guide; his gospel is understanding. These tunnels, he muses, will outlive us all, their crude neglect a testament to us folks who blithely (or deliberately) tossed junk down openings meant to swallow them from memory. As Garrett notes, the Earth remembers. He wonders what we leave down here will say about us. He comes across an abandoned camp in the tunnels and observes how wealth puts some in towers and forces others below — a pointed lament for the subterranean forgotten.
Then, a plunge into the antiseptic void of SNOLAB in Ontario, where physicist Mariangela Lisanti seeks that which has never been seen: dark matter. She, too, is a seeker, though vacuum-sealed equations inform her sub-pursuits. Called "Ms. Why" as a child, Lisanti now questions with gentle fervor the hidden architecture of the universe and sings the praises of SNOLAB's circuitous experiment: sending a fleet of massive photodetectors into the earth's depths, listening for an infinitesimal thing that, for now, exists only in calculation. Lisanti goes below to be frustrated by computer screens that read “null,” and the film responds with a shrug. The earth knows what's up, and we may never fully catch up with it, no matter how deep we go.
A chapter structure binds our three explorers, thematically fused by Hüller's narration, which provides a brief and breathy account of our planet's myths, exploring how they connect to the surface and beyond (she evokes the "world tree," Yggdrasil lore). Hüller, through Macfarlane's words, reminds us that there are no minutes or hours in the abyss, only epochs and eons, a heady but no less sturdy philosophy. The world above, where we plant our feet, shifts with the winds, lives and dies with change. The underground endures by absorbing and shifting over time, eternal. "Stone flows. The earth has tides. And ice breathes." Deep-time. Someone pass the joint.
Petit supplies groovy imagery — digitally rendered interstitials and mythic abstractions — that punctuate the film with a meditative rhythm. The soundscapes, composed by Hannah Peel, evoke tectonic motion and cosmic weight, giving charge to these three vertiginous descents, which converge in the third chapter, "The Crux," detailing what happens when the lusty pursuit of the deep funnels to a crawl. Here, standing out among its striking visuals (and one of its most admirably insane moments), Fatima and her crew pitch camp underground, their hammocks swinging amiably from the ancient walls that enclose them. That about sums up the film; Underland is both an aloof dirge and a passionate love letter to depth. It doesn't aim to inform so much as to dazzle, perhaps even inspire. Down here with Fatima, Bradley, and Mariangela, you may feel the call to descend and explore. Or just stay on the couch and let the beyond come to you.
6 / 10
Underland made its World Premiere on Friday, June 6, at the Village East by Angelika. For more info, click this.
Directed by Robert Petit.
Written by Robert Macfarlane and Robert Petit.
Narrated by Sandra Hüller.
Music by Hannah Peel.
79 mins. / Unrated. Things get claustrophobic for a minute.
A BRIGHT FUTURE
A Bright Future is a cozy bit of coming-of-age science fiction from Uruguayan director Lucía Garibaldi that features one of the most contrary leads I've seen in a while. Meet Elisa Vic (Martina Passeggi), the almost comically disobliging 18-year-old whom her community has chosen for a work placement in the North, which, anecdotally, is said to be a far more attractive situation than the nondescript housing unit where she and her tender-hearted mother dwell. Selected for her high IQ and keen perceptiveness, Elisa does what any true iconoclast would do: she uses those faculties to squirm out of her obligations with a level of dry defiance that borders on performance art.
Maybe it's out of rebellion, grief, or perhaps it's that her sister, sent North years prior, has seemingly shed all familial affection in favor of being Very Good at Her Job. Either way, she's not having any of it. North? No way. And to make matters worse, Elisa's neighborhood is celebrating her as a local celebrity — for them, going North is a great privilege, something her mother wants more than anything because it means her family will be reunited at last. But Elisa knows what's up: the powers-that-be want productivity, and housing a pragmatist like Elisa with her analytical sister will only create friction. Elisa knows she may never see her again, but Mom (Soledad Pelayo) holds out hope anyway, as mothers do. "Hope is the dream of those who are awake," she tells her daughter. Yes, but Elisa likes her naps.
A Bright Future has a shoestring sci-fi aesthetic that conveys containment economically and poignantly, which deftly illustrates why a free spirit like Elisa yearns to break free. As pets seem to be either outlawed or extinct, her neighborhood resonates with the ambient noise of cats and dogs mewing and barking from speakers, creating the artificial illusion of natural life betrayed by a radio hiss. When the community conducts weekly fumigation, the concrete buildings release a funky green smoke. (Ants are, apparently, a public menace.) Communal psychological experiments resemble a pajama party. Beyond the community borders lie untold choices, conveyed rather simply by a can of illicitly procured palmitos. As this world expands, cinematographer Arauco Hernández captures it with playful compositions that flirt with the meticulousness of Wes Anderson on a municipal budget.
A rebel among the normies is all well and good, but even they can feel lonely from time to time. Early on, Elisa becomes intrigued by the arrival of Leonora (Sofia Gala), a chain-smoking, one-legged loner who shares Elisa's disaffection and nudges it into a kind of guerrilla praxis. Together, the women devise a scheme to exploit their society's, erm, appreciation for the scent of adolescent body odor, which fills their coffers and brings the possibility of Elisa's escape agonizingly within reach.
In a world where free expression is regulated, and upward mobility demands both sacrifice and denial, it's no wonder Elisa rebels. However, rebellion, as Garibaldi suggests, has its own blind alleys. The most compelling aspect of A Bright Future is how Elisa, by rejecting the official path, is drawn to others not because they provide clarity but because they echo her angst. Matching frequencies is not the same as truth, and one spends a good chunk of the film hoping Elisa doesn't cut off her foot to spite the sprinters. "Youth is a nightmare," she says. She's right; in A Bright Future, it's wasted on the young, devoured by the old, a commodity to sustain the status quo. Maybe naptime is finally over.
7 / 10
A Bright Future made its World Premiere on Thursday, June 5, at the Village East by Angelika. For more info, click this.
Directed by Lucía Garibaldi.
Written by Lucía Garibaldi, Federico Alvarado.
Starring Martina Passeggi, Soledad Pelayo, Sofia Gala, and Alfonso Tort.
98 mins. / Unrated. Contains brief flashes of nudity and a curious deployment of stink.
DRAGONFLY
Tucked away in her tiny flat on a quiet residential street, retired widow Elsie (Brenda Blethyn) spends her days in an armchair, her only visitors the overstretched hospice nurses who pop by to check her vitals and give her a quick scrub. Next door lives Colleen (Andrea Riseborough), a brittle loner living on government assistance and the company of Saber, her enormous dog. What they share, aside from a thin wall, is their loneliness and a low opinion of the care Elsie has been receiving. It isn't long before Colleen ingratiates herself into sweet, trusting Elsie's life. She irons, does the shopping, massages the arthritis away, and becomes a friend. But why?
At first blush, Paul Andrew Williams' Dragonfly plays like a grounded social drama concerned with elder care and neighborly trust, the stuff of human decency. As Elsie says, "It's what you do, innit?" Colleen, whose isolation appears to be chosen, if not imposed by years of undiagnosed mental illness, sees it another way: "It's my ticket to Heaven." The two fall into a rhythm, and what unfolds fits the dramatic bill, featuring two magnificent performances that mine rich emotional ore from a deceptively simple premise. Elsie is alone in the twilight of her life, and Colleen has the time and ability to care for her. So the hospice nurses are abruptly sent packing, and an affecting friendship begins to blossom despite Colleen's jagged barbs.
The only complication — aside from Colleen's unspoken ulterior motives (an open drawer in Elsie's bedroom keeps catching her eye) — is the arrival of John (Jason Watkins), Elsie's son, a gray-flannel type who sizes up his mum's new friend and her hulking pooch and doesn't like what he sees. The thing is, despite her prickliness, Colleen is quite adept at taking care of Elsie, which complicates the diagnosis of their unusual relationship. Her dry, acerbic bedside manner lifts Elsie's spirits and seems to provide her with some long-lost energy. If John (or Williams, really) had taken the time to appreciate how much Elsie has benefited from Colleen's unorthodox approach to home care, things for the three of them — and the film they appear in — might have turned out differently.
Dragonfly would be a terrific drama if it weren't so preoccupied with being a thriller. This exquisitely performed chamber piece from Williams (known for more overt genre fare, such as 2008's horror-comedy The Cottage and co-writing Martin Campbell's Cleaner from earlier this year) initially drew me in with the strength of its two leads and the frankness with which he presents their sad, isolated lives. His tendency to genre-smash, at least at first, is restrained. Williams allows for thoughtful contrasts between the two women's lives — Colleen's spartan digs juxtaposed with Elsie's well-loved home ("[Your flat is] like mine, but reversed," Colleen says, and she's right in so many ways) — creating a tenderness that's later intruded upon by tension, when Colleen's inner rage is jolted awake and Dragonfly pivots to something darker and more conventional.
Before then, however, the smart contrasts continue. Colleen suffers from self-hatred, which Riseborough brings to the fore with astonishing power, while Elsie's doting maternal instincts — via a lovely, lived-in performance of warmth and worry from Blethyn — are enough to mute her neighbor's fury but too feeble to stop the inevitable conflict. For a good stretch, the thriller aspects — foreboding shadows, still shots that shudder at the edges, and one effective scare from a kitchen door — were muted to make room for a nuanced and intimate drama. I hoped against hope for a happy ending while also dreading where it was going. When it got there, I was made sad for all the wrong reasons. Williams couldn't find a clearing in the thicket of broken hearts he'd created and chose to scorch earth instead. More's the pity; with a bit more care, Dragonfly might have soared.
4.5 / 10
Dragonfly made its World Premiere on Friday, June 6, at the SVA Theatre. For more info, click this.
Written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams.
Starring Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn, and Jason Watkins.
98 mins. / Unrated. The kitchen floor gets coated with something other than spilled milk.