2021 Sundance Film Festival Review – Strawberry Mansion
Starring Penny Fuller, Kentucker Audley, Grace Glowicki, Reed Birney, Linas Phillips, and Constance Shulman.
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.
Forward-thinking authors over the decades have theorised that our dreams and memories might one day be commodified, an idea which gets an especially peculiar treatment in Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s (
Sylvio) black comedy adventure
Strawberry Mansion.
In a dystopian future, the government has extended taxation to citizens’ dreams, resulting in “dream auditors” being sent around the U.S. to total up the “expenditure” – that is, seemingly any meaningful content, be it hot air balloons, buffalos, or dandelions – by placing a worth on them and charging accordingly.
Strawberry Mansion Review: Cheerfully Lo-Fi Fantasy Aims to Save Our Dreams From Corporate Overlords Strawberry Mansion Review: Cheerfully Lo-Fi Fantasy Aims to Save Our Dreams From Corporate Overlords
Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney s sweet, shoestring Sundance oddity posits a near future in which our sleeping hours are up for sale.
Guy Lodge, provided by
FacebookTwitterEmail
With: Kentucker Audley, Penny Fuller, Grace Glowicki, Reed Birney, Linas Phillips, Constance Shulman, Ephraim Birney, Albert Birney.
Running time: Running time: 91 MIN.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
It’s a popular conception that there’s nothing more boring than hearing about other people’s dreams, which by rights should make James Preble the meek, cutely mustachioed hero of “Strawberry Mansion” the unfortunate owner of the world’s dullest job: He’s a tax auditor who has to scan his clients’ recorded dreams for hidden expenses. This makes a rough kind of sense in Kentucker A
Sweet respite from painful times.
TWITTER
Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney s film is a futuristic fantasy-romance revolving around a man and the woman whose dreams he is tasked with auditing.
It’s rare for an independent film to be as gentle and childlike as
Strawberry Mansion, the second feature collaboration from writing-directing team Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney. The filmmakers, who have made a number of movies separately, established their whimsical partnership with
Sylvio, a similarly quirky comedy about a kind, misunderstood gorilla who loves puppets. That film introduced us to Audley and Birney’s quiet, candy-colored world characterized by curiosity and warmth.
Linas Phillips walks 1,200 miles from Seattle to the Los Angeles home of director Werner Herzog in the documentary Walking to Werner.
The free spirit Werner Herzog, whose Rescue Dawn is now a considerable success, likes to walk. He has inspired at least two would-be filmmakers to follow in his footsteps. Faithful readers will know that I value Herzog s films beyond all measure, and never tire of telling the famous story of the time he learned his dear friend, the film historian Lotte Eisner, was dying in Paris. Thereupon he set off to walk from Munich to Paris, convinced she would not die before his arrival, and he was quite right.
Passing
The indie film showcase s pandemic-era program also has directorial debuts by Jerrod Carmichael, Pascual Sisto and Questlove with his Black Woodstock documentary.
As Sundance director Tabitha Jackson s reign at the indie film festival gets well underway, the marquee indie U.S. film showcase has gone mostly online with a pandemic-era discovery lineup filled with work by women and BIPOC directors and more than half the 2021 program shot by first-time helmers.
For Jackson, the focus on debut feature directors underlines how, despite the COVID-19 crisis pausing film production in Hollywood and upending planning for Sundance s upcoming Jan. 28 to Feb. 3, 2021, edition, the marquee festival isn t playing it safe as it doubles down on revealing new independent voices to the world.