Strawberry Mansion

A tax auditor of the future falls in love with a client through her dreams.

Fifteen years ago, an unheralded American movie broke in upon us with an impact that makes it fondly remembered to this day. That film was Richard Kelly's first feature Donnie Darko with the still relatively unknown Jake Gyllenhaal as its teenage hero. Its compelling originality which linked adolescent problems with supernatural and surreal elements soon turned it into a cult hit. It was all the more alluring because it drew the audience into a world born of Kelly's imagination and quite unlike anything else seen previously.

This comparison came to mind throughout the first half of Strawberry Mansion, an equally unique vision from the minds of its two creators Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney and with Audley himself in the lead role. In their case they had already worked together on 2017’s Sylvio but that was not released in Britain and thus for many viewers discovering their work through this new film will be as fresh an experience as first chancing on Donnie Darko. If one wants to consider other inventive and popular oddball movies in this context then the two that most readily come to mind are Groundhog Day (1993) and The Truman Show (1998). But both of those fielded major stars in the leading role so Donnie Darko is the comparison that seems the closest.

Strawberry Mansion is set in 2035 but it is a work closer to fantasy than to sci-fi while also treating in an eccentrically satirical way scenes relevant to real life that are applicable in our own times. The main futuristic notion is that James Preble (Audley’s role) exists in an age when the authorities are set on taxing people for images that come up in their dreams – there's even a set of charges allocated to specific objects that appear in this way. James has the job of auditing people’s dreams for this purpose and, when he calls on an aging artist, Bella Isadora (Penny Fuller), who has failed to record this information on an air stick as legally required, he finds himself having to check through her dream archive which proves to contain two thousand videotapes.

The first half of the film sets out the situation and also does two other things as well. First, it allows us to watch Bella’s dreams alongside James who is actually drawn into them to the extent of seeing Bella’s younger self (Grace Glowicki) and responding to her presence. Secondly, we are introduced to a serious theme that will run throughout the film. We discover that the dreams of individuals become a sphere into which advertisements and commercial propaganda can be inserted (indeed at the outset we see a dream experienced by James himself in which a friendly figure, a role played by Linas Phillips, is promoting such items as fried chicken and soda). This aspect showing individuals being got at unaware in the interests of selling more goods gives the film its satirical edge, but this develops alongside a love story as James finds himself attracted to young Bella. It is a side of the film that could easily have been sentimentalised in a cloying way, but the offbeat nature of the world in which James lives is sharp enough to undercut that possibility.

Although cheaply made, Strawberry Mansion has a visual style all its own, benefits hugely from Dan Deacon’s carefully judged music score and is quite beautifully cast and played. Audley himself is a figure with whom we identify even as James gets out of his depth, Fuller and Glowicki are perfectly matched as the older and younger Bella and, when he arrives on the scene, Reed Birney in the role of Bella’s son Peter captures admirably the menace that he exudes.

From the outset Strawberry Mansion takes advantage of the illogic that can be found in dreams and its introduction of such figures as a frog waiter (Albert Birney) works well enough in that context. But, when James is physically attacked by the aggressive Peter, the film changes. Until then the film has followed its own logic differentiating between the world in which James exists and the one that he enters through the tapes and showing this turn by turn while also showing us some of his own dreams. The attack becomes an excuse to create a more generalised sense of nightmare as the film intercuts dreams that are increasingly fantastical with much briefer ones showing the plight of James. For some, this freedom may enhance the film’s appeal, but I found it self-indulgent and not half as easy to get on terms with as the film’s first half which, obeying its own rules, had come across as a work that might well have become a masterpiece. What is good here is terrific and for some it could be that the second half works as well as the first. For me it didn’t.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Kentucker Audley, Penny Fuller, Grace Glowicki, Linas Phillips, Reed Birney, Constance Shulman, Ephraim Birney, Albert Birney, Shannon Heartwood, Matt Heartwood, Lawrence Worthington, Mack Reyes.

Dir Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney, Pro Emma Hannaway, Matisse Rifai, Sarah Winshall and Taylor Ava Shung, Screenplay Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley, Ph Tyler Davis, Pro Des Becca Brooks Morrin Ed Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney, Music Dan Deacon, Costumes Mack Reyes.

Ley Line Entertainment/Cartuna/Kaleidoscope/Salem Street Entertainment/A Guavatron LLC Production-Bulldog Film Distribution.
91 mins. USA. 2021. US Rel: 18 February 2022. UK Rel: 16 September 2022. Cert. 12A.