Strawberry Mansion, 2021.
Written and Directed by Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney.
Starring Penny Fuller, Kentucker Audley, Grace Glowicki, Reed Birney, Linas Phillips, Constance Shulman, and Albert Birney.
SYNOPSIS:
In a future where the government records dreams and taxes them, a dream auditor gets caught up in the dreams of an aging eccentric.
Taking the title somewhat literally, Strawberry Mansion opens inside a home where everything seems to be strawberry colored; the lighting, the walls, pill bottles, household objects, etc. if that’s not weird enough, a beach bum resembling man claiming to be a friend enters the owner’s house with buckets of fried chicken, coming across like a salesperson more than a buddy. It turns out this is all a dream, aside from the prominence of the fried chicken chain, which exists in real life and offers something called a fried chicken shake which is probably somehow more dangerous than anything KFC has ever placed on their menu.
James Preble (Kentucker Audley, also one of the film’s co-directors and writers) is the seemingly empty man having these dreams, and we soon learn that he is a tax auditor for the average citizen’s dreams. It’s also important to note that Strawberry Mansion is not necessarily a futuristic film but rather set in a retro world with advanced technology (for example, the dreams are stored on VHS tapes). It’s a decision that allows filmmakers Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney to go unchecked in bizarreness while on a shoestring budget. As a result, most of these low-budget effects (which incorporate everything from stop motion animation to minimalistic ghost designs and all kinds of other strange artistic choices) fit inside the scope of something this esoteric and specifically weird.
Nonetheless, James is tasked with traveling to the farmhouse (gorgeously captured from a distance by Tyler Davis) of Arabella Isadora (Penny Fuller) to perform an audit. There are hundreds upon hundreds of dreams to go through, with much fascination coming from this concept and watching James conduct this business (with Grace Glowicki portraying a significantly younger Arabella, known as Bella). He puts on an oversized VR device (it doesn’t even look like a headset but rather some kind of respiratory machine, complete with tubes) over his head, monotonously existing inside the dreams as a blue specter with on-screen notifications indicating the taxation cost for every item that enters the dream. To clarify, purchases inside these dreams are not what is being taxed. Anything that’s not a human that comes into play as part of the dream (such as picking up a flower) receives taxation.
Naturally, a concept alone is not enough to carry any story for 90 minutes, so a mystery also develops that relates to the man in James’ dreams and what it means for the world. It soon becomes apparent that Arabella figured out a way to block certain things from happening inside her dreams, which becomes another critical component to developing and unraveling the mystery. Strawberry Mansion also transitions into an unlikely love story between these two as James continues to spend time in Bella’s dreams. The romance itself is not necessarily deep, but the characters are fighting against makes for a bold artistic statement.
Admittedly, Strawberry Mansion does have the occasional stretch where Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney begin to lose investment (especially at the beginning of the third act, which threatens to derail whatever is left), but there are just as many oddball sequences imaginatively pushing back against capitalism. It’s also vividly colorful, even if the character has plastic bottles excessively dumped all over them. It’s not always successful at evoking emotion, but the direction is so assured and memorably meticulous in its idiosyncrasy that it remains an absorbing deadpan watch as much as it is a confounding one.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
