Dream logic, logically dreamed
The writer, director, actor, and veteran Samuel Fuller is said to have remarked that the only way to make a truly realistic war film is to fill a theater full of patrons, then have soldiers shoot at them from behind the screen. No matter how realistic, a war film is still a film.
What about a dream logic film? Writers and directors are tempted to concoct all manner of kaleidoscopic imagery, dialog, sound, editing, etc., stuff it in a film, and call it dream logic. Think David Lynch, Charlie Kaufman, Altman, Buñel… the list goes on. The problem, which is rarely overcome, is to maintain a narrative flow, and keep the emotions flowing. Dreams are universal, but the cinematic dream as a metaphor can be very hit or miss.
Thankfully, Strawberry Mansion, screening this week at the 2021 San Francisco International Film Festival, excels both at presenting a believable dream logic, but expressing accessible emotions and engaging characters in a story that, while circuitous, tells us that love will always win.
Co-writer, co-director (along with Albert Birney), star, and superbly-named Kentucker Audley treads on the well-worn intersection of dream logic and sci-fi to introduce us to a time in the future when dreams are accessible to strangers. Worse, certain images that appear in our dreams are subject to tax, and when taxes aren’t paid, the auditor pays a visit. Sure it’s contrived, but the film’s pacing hurries us along before we have much time to ponder this idea.
It seems that bon vivant Arabella Isadora, played by Penny Fuller, who lives alone in a hillside mansion worthy of Andrew Wyeth, is tardy on her dream taxes, so James Preble, played by Audley, comes to do a dream audit.
Fuller’s Isadora is outstanding as an elder-artist just trying to be left alone, but whose obvious attraction to this handsome but tightly wound stranger mucking around in her dreams lights a spark that burns through the whole film. Her lines are pretty basic, and her intent is one of distanced flirtation, so she lets her wide, sweet face do most of the acting.
And, as faces go, Audler’s Preble works overtime as well. It’s a face that carries the film’s narrative weight, a face that’s initially implacable and slightly bored. Preble is just a regular guy trying to do his day job with his day face. But, by the film’s end, he’s enmeshed in a world at once in the here and now and the distant past, at once serenely innocent and diabolically demonic.
Inhabiting most of Bella’s dreamscape is young Bella, played with a satisfying combination of erotic longing and open-hearted love by Grace Glowicki.
Preble reviews dreams. They are captured on big, clunky VHS tapes, and cinematographer Tyler Davis delights in showing the quaint action of pushing a tape into a playback machine, and the satisfying “chulunck” of the tape getting ready to play. Preble watches dreams in a hooded contraption reminiscent of something my son made when he was five, meant to be played for laughs, but which doesn’t land. With each press of PLAY, Preble is inserted into Bella’s and, increasingly, his dream world, one he becomes more and more involved in.
Yes, there’s a lot to absorb, but what makes Strawberry Mansion satisfying is that, though not totally understandable, and verging on the chaotic, the story told in dream after dream is stitched together with enough of a through line and with enough emotion that we root for Preble, even though we’re not sure what or whom he’s fighting, who he can count on, and who’s after him.
Kudos both to the very compact editing of Matthew Riggieri and especially to the VFX team, who’ve managed to create what can only be called a lo-fi sci-fi look that blends early 2000’s video games, Web 1.0 sites, and high school theater department props.
Let’s hope Strawberry Mansion pops up on some platform somewhere, sometime after the Festival ends, because it’s well worth your time.
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Strawberry Mansion will screen at the SFFILM Festival tomorrow, Friday, April 16th, at 9:30pm at the Fort Mason Center drive-in. Tickets are available on the SFFILM Festival website, here.
