Director Claudia Llosa returns to form with a woozy work about a cosy domesticity in rural Argentina shattered by uncanny intruders
After making high-arthouse awards-magnet The Milk of Sorrow in her native Peru in 2009, director Claudia Llosa stumbled in 2014 with her first English-language feature, Aloft which, despite its title, failed to take flight. And while seven years isn’t that long a time between films these days in the world of indie cinema, Fever Dream, feels like a return from a distant wilderness. Distribution via Netflix after a premiere at the San Sebastián film festival and short cinema run may be a decent strategy for this future cult classic – it’s a film that plays remarkably well on TV screens, especially if viewed alone late at night, as it’s all about a cosy domesticity that’s suddenly cruelly pierced by uncanny intruders.
Set in rural Argentina although apparently shot in Chile,...
After making high-arthouse awards-magnet The Milk of Sorrow in her native Peru in 2009, director Claudia Llosa stumbled in 2014 with her first English-language feature, Aloft which, despite its title, failed to take flight. And while seven years isn’t that long a time between films these days in the world of indie cinema, Fever Dream, feels like a return from a distant wilderness. Distribution via Netflix after a premiere at the San Sebastián film festival and short cinema run may be a decent strategy for this future cult classic – it’s a film that plays remarkably well on TV screens, especially if viewed alone late at night, as it’s all about a cosy domesticity that’s suddenly cruelly pierced by uncanny intruders.
Set in rural Argentina although apparently shot in Chile,...
- 10/7/2021
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
“Fever dream” has lately become an overused term in film marketing and criticism alike, often generically applied to anything faintly strange or surreal with fractured storytelling trickery and a lick of gauzy ambience. As a title for the latest feature from Peruvian director Claudia Llosa, it serves a similarly loose, woolly purpose, despite not being particularly apt: A psychological thriller in which two mothers fear their children’s souls have gone adrift, the film’s narrative unfolds less as fever dream than waking nightmare, though its hazy, sunstruck styling lends it a certain somnambulant quality.
As with Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin’s celebrated source novel — co-adapted by the author with Llosa — the film’s original Spanish title is rather more evocative. Translating as “The Rescue Distance,” referring to the protagonist’s constant mental calculations as to how long it would take her to reach her daughter in an emergency, it...
As with Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin’s celebrated source novel — co-adapted by the author with Llosa — the film’s original Spanish title is rather more evocative. Translating as “The Rescue Distance,” referring to the protagonist’s constant mental calculations as to how long it would take her to reach her daughter in an emergency, it...
- 9/27/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
A frightened young mother named Amanda (Maria Valverde) is being dragged on her back through a dark marsh. Worms — worms that are everywhere inside the body. “You have to understand what’s important,” the pre-teen David (Emilio Vodanovich) invisibly whispers into her ear canal. “Where’s my daughter?” Amanda asks. That’s not important. Beautiful Carola (Dolores Fonzi) leaning her head out of a car window, her curled blonde hair catching in the wind. A slow river seeps by into everything it touches. You have to pay attention to the details. Horses breeding and dying. Souls in flight.
Adapted from Samanta Schweblin’s 2014 novel of the same name, ; it’s a cold shiver of a film that doesn’t unfold so much as it sweats out, the most effective scenes febrile with maternal panic so intense that you can feel the movie hovering between life and death — allure and repulsion.
Adapted from Samanta Schweblin’s 2014 novel of the same name, ; it’s a cold shiver of a film that doesn’t unfold so much as it sweats out, the most effective scenes febrile with maternal panic so intense that you can feel the movie hovering between life and death — allure and repulsion.
- 9/21/2021
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
“Detail is important,” says the disembodied voice of a young boy as a woman is dragged by her feet across the floor of a damp, dingy forest. A voice that could be hers replies as the two voices pool their memories of a day something dreadful happened. “Am I screaming?” asks the woman’s voice. “Yes,” says the boy. The stage is set for what will surely be a horror film.
No, actually. Fever Dream (Distancia De Recate), Peruvian director Claudia Llosa’s San Sebastian Film Festival premiere — which debuts on Netflix in October — is full of borrowings from the horror playbook: a lonely house in the country, a sinister town full of oddballs, a witchy wise woman the locals trust more than the over-burdened country doctor, two women going stir-crazy together and, centrally and almost inevitably, a devil child. These are, however, red herrings; the Devil is not in those tricked-up details.
No, actually. Fever Dream (Distancia De Recate), Peruvian director Claudia Llosa’s San Sebastian Film Festival premiere — which debuts on Netflix in October — is full of borrowings from the horror playbook: a lonely house in the country, a sinister town full of oddballs, a witchy wise woman the locals trust more than the over-burdened country doctor, two women going stir-crazy together and, centrally and almost inevitably, a devil child. These are, however, red herrings; the Devil is not in those tricked-up details.
- 9/21/2021
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
With Netflix’s Spanish-language thriller “Fever Dream,” a likely Oscar submission from Peru that debuts at the San Sebastian Film Festival on September 20, Claudia Llosa (Oscar-nominated “Milk of Sorrow”) returns to South America after filming her English-language follow-up, family drama “Aloft,” starring Jennifer Connelly.
The atmospheric, hallucinatory “Fever Dream” is another mother and son fable. After the birth of Llosa’s second child, the director read the magic realist novel “Distancia de Rescate,” by Argentine author Samanta Schweblin, and instantly saw the movie in her mind. “Usually, I’m not looking for things to adapt, but it just captured me in such a way that I needed to do it,” Llosa said on a Zoom call from her home in Barcelona. She wrote Berlin-based Schweblin to ask for a meeting. She wanted the author to help her adapt the story.
Then the director approached producer Mark Johnson, who had been...
The atmospheric, hallucinatory “Fever Dream” is another mother and son fable. After the birth of Llosa’s second child, the director read the magic realist novel “Distancia de Rescate,” by Argentine author Samanta Schweblin, and instantly saw the movie in her mind. “Usually, I’m not looking for things to adapt, but it just captured me in such a way that I needed to do it,” Llosa said on a Zoom call from her home in Barcelona. She wrote Berlin-based Schweblin to ask for a meeting. She wanted the author to help her adapt the story.
Then the director approached producer Mark Johnson, who had been...
- 9/16/2021
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
With Netflix’s Spanish-language thriller “Fever Dream,” a likely Oscar submission from Peru that debuts at the San Sebastian Film Festival on September 20, Claudia Llosa (Oscar-nominated “Milk of Sorrow”) returns to South America after filming her English-language follow-up, family drama “Aloft,” starring Jennifer Connelly.
The atmospheric, hallucinatory “Fever Dream” is another mother and son fable. After the birth of Llosa’s second child, the director read the magic realist novel “Distancia de Rescate,” by Argentine author Samanta Schweblin, and instantly saw the movie in her mind. “Usually, I’m not looking for things to adapt, but it just captured me in such a way that I needed to do it,” Llosa said on a Zoom call from her home in Barcelona. She wrote Berlin-based Schweblin to ask for a meeting. She wanted the author to help her adapt the story.
Then the director approached producer Mark Johnson, who had been...
The atmospheric, hallucinatory “Fever Dream” is another mother and son fable. After the birth of Llosa’s second child, the director read the magic realist novel “Distancia de Rescate,” by Argentine author Samanta Schweblin, and instantly saw the movie in her mind. “Usually, I’m not looking for things to adapt, but it just captured me in such a way that I needed to do it,” Llosa said on a Zoom call from her home in Barcelona. She wrote Berlin-based Schweblin to ask for a meeting. She wanted the author to help her adapt the story.
Then the director approached producer Mark Johnson, who had been...
- 9/16/2021
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Dependably handsome and pleasingly involving, “The Accused” takes a classic “did-she-or-didn’t-she” murder scenario and mostly focuses on the family dynamics of a young woman accused of stabbing her best friend. Directed with assurance by Gonzalo Tobal (“Villegas”), the film hits the right buttons as it keeps audiences guessing the outcome, generating sympathy for all involved as the pressures of maintaining a façade for the media take their toll. Considerably more invested in criticizing the ways criminal cases are packaged and won in the court of public opinion than in systematically exploring the details of the murder, “The Accused” is solid, straightforward storytelling, certain to do well in Spanish-speaking territories and perhaps beyond.
It’s been two and a half years since 21-year-old Dolores Dreier (actress and pop star Lali Espósito) was first accused of murdering her best friend Camila Nieves after a drunken party, but only now is the...
It’s been two and a half years since 21-year-old Dolores Dreier (actress and pop star Lali Espósito) was first accused of murdering her best friend Camila Nieves after a drunken party, but only now is the...
- 9/4/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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