Category: World Cinema
Language: Spanish
Director: Carlos Vermut
Running time: 127 minutes
The film opens to a children’s book-like narrative, where Luis, an unemployed teacher, finds that the condition of his leukaemia-affected daughter is going from bad to worse.
For him, expressive affection doesn’t come easy, although he cares for his daughter very much. Chancing upon a fancy of Alicia’s, the dress of Magical Girl Yukiko in a Japanese anime series, he is plotting ways to make money to buy it, for it’s very expensive. He sells his books, talks to his friends, whereas his daughter longs for some time with him. The perfect setting for an Anton Checkov story, isn’t it?
Not at all. Magical Girl is a strange story, with stranger characters striding towards intriguing ends. The film has booked its place in the World Cinema category of IFFK.
Let’s revisit the opening frame again to pull out the face of the girl that calls her professor, Damian, ‘lettuce face’. She’s Barbara. That was a long time ago. Now Barbara is a young woman, and her husband calls her ‘flighty and silly’, to which she adds ‘pretty’. She knows that all of it is true of her. And much more.
Luis’ search for money ends in Barbara. A chance meeting, designed beautifully, leaves these strangers alone in Barbara’s apartment. A one night stand later, Luis starts to blackmail Barabara for money. Barbara’s strained relationship with her husband, who is uncertain whether to trust her, leaves her looking for other avenues to make money. Old relationships are revoked, strange paths treaded and just when it looks like the film turned a shade of grey, there’s a turning point again.
It turns a deep shade of red, with strange twists of an unexpected kind. Magical Girl, as a story/plot awes you; the alignment of events and overlapping realities hikes its potential. However, interest waxes and wanes and it becomes harder to sustain the curiosity, since the plot runs through confused mazes and finally, after a long wait, glues its fragments together for a rather startling end.
A puzzling and bizarre narrative, the Magical Girl is for those of us who can grab the thrill factor from the jaws of impatience.
Star factors
» Screenplay and plot are drawn out well.
» A great narrative style coupled with crisp editing, although it could have been a shorter presentation.