MIFF Session 1: VIVARIUM

Young and upwardly mobile Tom and Gemma are househunting when they come upon a strange real estate office promoting a new housing estate. They drive out with the realtor to inspect the place and find that it is just one of an apparently boundless cluster of identical green houses. The realtor vanishes during the house inspection and the couple discover that they can't leave, the estate is so labyrinthine and circular that they are bound to return to the house they were shown, number 9. Out of petrol and irritated they enter the house and stay the night. The next morning they find a box of groceries and another containing a baby. The message on that box reads: Raise the child and you will be released.

That's as much plot as I'll give here as there are many twists and turns that are best discovered fresh. We have already seen a cuckoo chick in action, ousting the egg and chicks of a nest. We take little time to see that something very similar is happening here. This is in great part due to the sheer intentional artificiality of the setting with its painted clouds and CG aerial shots. The audacity alone would sell it to a point but it needs our engagement as it grows ever stranger.

This comes largely in the performances of a pair of instantly appealing actors, Jessie Eisenberg and Imogen Poots. Without the warmth of these turns this film might well have made the mistake of misstepped absurdism that starts at ten and just retreads whimsy, becoming exhausting. This film, though it outstays its welcome by about twenty minutes, is not allowed to make that mistake because this cast responds to strengths in the writing that allow for dynamics that keep us guessing. That's a pretty fine feat for a film that declares itself to be outside reality. So much of that is that it starts rooted in a very appealing realism. When we go beyond that we do so with the same kind of memories that the couple have.

The screening featured a Q&A with director Lorcan Finnegan who crucially mentioned Woman in the Dunes as an influence. Amid all the Magritte and Terry Gilliam aesthetic, it was this very film that I recalled with its characters who begin by resisting life responsibilities to find how much easier it is to resign to them and the saddening resonance that has. A good start to a MIFF I think I'll enjoy.

Lorcan Finnegan (R) Q&A with MIFF
programmer Thomas Caldwell