The desire for revenge, a sadomasochist’s forbidden room and a mahou shoujo (magical girl) anime come together to form an intriguing and expertly tangled web in Carlos Vermut’s second feature-length thriller concerning the interconnecting lives of individuals following 2011’s Diamond Flash.
Damian, an out-of-work academic, has a sick daughter, Alicia, who doesn’t have long to live. When Alicia’s condition worsens, Damian resolves to do whatever it takes to fulfil her dying wish – to wear a dress like the one worn by the main character in a popular Japanese anime, ‘Magical Girl Yukiko’, a designer item with an €800 price tag. His bizarre quest will see him enter the narratives, both directly and indirectly, of numerous other desperate and damaged individuals who will do anything to obtain what they desire.
Vermut also works as a graphic novelist, and the genre-bending style often found in the form underpins MAGICAL GIRL, weaving together character-focused drama and darkly humourous magical realism to spellbinding effect. This ambitious blend never crosses over into melodrama: the characters remain believable despite the increasingly stylised narrative strokes. Silence and static shots allow the tension in the climactic scenes to grow naturally, no orchestral stabs dictating the intended response. The film’s deceptively simplistic urban narrative is reminiscent of the social-realist films of Iciar Bollain, but as the story and its characters unravel, a transgressive edge akin to that of Almodovar’s earlier and angrier works casts a darker shadow. MAGICAL GIRL has a bleak tale to tell, and Vermut has similarly political intentions with his film. However, these cynical reflections on Spanish society lack any meaningful resonance in the context of a tense and immersive character drama.
Reflections, both literal and symbolic, reveal the connections between the desperate people that inhabit Carlos Vermut’s urban fable, each player slotting together piece by piece into an intricate interpersonal puzzle. These developments are executed with masterful restraint – it is only when Vermut pulls the curtain aside in the film’s final moments to put the last piece of the puzzle in place that his drifting strands snap neatly and satisfyingly together, the twist providing beautiful symmetry. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
THE MAGICAL GIRL screened on 6 September at 15.30 at the Cambridge Film Festival.
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