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PostPosted: Sat May 01, 2021 2:02 pm 
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AMALIA ULMAN: EL PLANETA (2021) - ND/NF 2021

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ALEJANDRA AND AMALIA ULMAN IN EL PLANETA

Acts of random reality denial

Unless you're very rich, there is an edge between yourself and homelessness that is thinner than you may think, and this is a frightening fact the new Spanish comedy El Planeta gives us some bitter tastes of in its series of dry black and white (but mostly black) vignettes. The director is conceptual artist Amalia Ulman, who studied costume design at Central Saint Martins in London, whose history seems not unlike that of Leo, her character here. Her mother Ale Ulman is here too as the mother of "Leo" (Ms. Ulman), and they are living, barely, in Gijón, Asturia, in a flat where they can no longer pay the utility bills. They live by grifting and in self deception. But how much of comfortable bourgeois life, in a time of economic crisis, is a thing of self-deception and narrow margins?

Leo and her mother are stylish and the mother looks young. They like shopping. A credit card is still working and mom charges meals and food to a rich man friend who may or may not exist. Leo sells her sewing machine to someone, perhaps to afford a trip to New York where she has been requested to design outfits for Christina Aguilar; only it would be only for the prestige as the pay would be minimal. But she would take nothing less. As for her mother, she qualifies for virtually no benefits because she is considered a housewife, and she doesn't consider getting a job. So the time and money are running out.

In the opening scene, Leo is meeting with a married man who has answered her online self-advertisement as a sex worker. But his requirements are disgusting and his pay offer is derisory so it's a no-go. Later in a shop Leo meets Amadeus (Chen Zhou), a sometime London resident minding his relative's business. He seems attractive. He lures Leo into a date, which turns to sex at his place. The next day she learns he might buy the small shoes he's admiring for his son. He has a son and a wife too. Is that a thing? Yes, as a matter of fact it is.

Leo doesn't wear heels because she was in an accident as a result of which her legs hurt.

At the end, it seems mother is interested in how she's heard the food in prison is good.

This is a kind of bare bones sexually explicit pessimistic comedy that is stunning in its cold-bloodedness. It has been compared with early Jim Jarmusch, but where is the hilarity of Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law? or the sense of orderly pacing? I found no delight here. What I did find was a mindset that's eye-opening about living on the edge and living by lies, women who call eating nothing but cookies and cakes a "disassociative diet" and who, when the electricity is turned off, switch to reading in bed on their cell phone, or peruse a book by the timed light in front of the elevator. In the daytime they shop and afterwards treat themselves to taxis. The end is in sight, but when it comes they'll never tell, not even one another.

Il Planeta 79 mins., debuted at Sundance, Jan. 2021. Screened at home for this review as part of New Directors/New Fims, MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center, Apr. 2021. Metascore 79%.

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