I Have Electric Dreams
Valentina Maurel’s Costa Rican drama heralds a major new filmmaking talent.
Valentina Maurel’s first feature offers something that is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. The former lies in the fact that this is a study of an adolescent girl. She is the 16-year-old Eva, a role-played quite magnificently by a newcomer to acting, Daniela Marín Navarro. This is a performance as striking as that given by the great European actress Eva Mattes when she acted the role of a 14-year-old in the 1972 Fassbinder film Wild Game (sometimes known as Jail Bait) and one hopes that Navarro too will have a great career ahead of her.
Maurel was born in Costa Rica and it is there in San José that her film is set. Eva is living in the city with her mother, Anca (Vivian Rodríguez Barquero), and her younger sister, Sol (Adriana Castro García) but truth to tell she would rather be with her father, Martín (Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez). The parents are divorced and, while sharing temporary accommodation with his old friend Dove (José Pablo Segreda Johanning), Martín is seeking an apartment that he can afford. Eva often accompanies him when he inspects a property and is anxious that it should have a spare bedroom so that she could live with him. Meanwhile she often visits his present abode and sometimes stays over without first agreeing that with her mother.
Maurel’s narrative is very much one that is seen through the eyes of Eva although all of the characters are most convincingly drawn. This approach means that we are aware of her burgeoning sexuality and her mother’s disapproval of the fact that Eva should be friendly with a girl like Diana (Mayté Ortego Floris) whom she regards as somewhat loose. Martín is something of an artist writing poetry as well as sculpting and is involved in bohemian gatherings that include a poetry workshop arranged by Dove. Drawn to this environment, Eva experiments with smoking dope and then finds Dove making a pass at her. What then follows finds Eva losing her virginity to him. But this is no forceful seduction by a man of her father’s age: initially she resists Dove’s promptings refusing to be told what to do but almost immediately decides to take the initiative herself and finds it a fun experience. But, if she seems to be controlling events, she is also naive enough to believe that further sex with Dove must mean that he loves her.
If there is little originality in all of this that hardly matters when everything about the film is so well judged. Indeed, the film has won festival awards at both Locarno and Thessaloniki and, if Navarro absolutely deserves her win, so too do Gutiérrez and Maurel. The latter’s direction is remarkably assured given that this is her first feature film while the editing by Bertrand Conard is also a great asset. As for the unfamiliar side to the tale, this lies in the effective ambiguities present beneath the surface. I Have Electric Dreams is very much a film that invites the viewer to interpret it in whatever way they choose when it comes down to details that may or may not be felt to carry weight.
One instance of this stems from the story being told from Eva's viewpoint. The film contains a pre-credit sequence in which Martín is driving the family home. When he gets out of the car, he has an outburst in which he batters his head against the garage door. Clearly, he is volatile to an extent that suggests inner demons that could even amount to mental instability. There is a wildness here echoed in the poem which gives the film its title and Anca sees Eva as not immune from this. Maurel herself has said that the transmission of violence is a theme in her film and it is even the case that the family cat, loved by Eva, is often described as crazy and at one point scratches the face of Eva's younger sister. What we don't know is Martín’s past history and how he would be diagnosed by a doctor or a psychiatrist, but since Eva might be equally unaware it is apt enough for this issue to be left open.
A further key ambiguity lies in the exact nature of the close bond between father and daughter. Their rapport, at times almost flirtatious, is evident enough but he is not above hurting her on occasion with the excuse that she needs to get used to bearing some pain. In 1971 Louis Malle’s Dearest Love (Le Souffle au Coeur) studied a mother’s love for her teenage son which became incestuous. The father/daughter relationship here never goes that far, but there are hints in that direction (when viewing one apartment Eva is mistaken for Martín’s wife; Anca at one point links her daughter’s attachment to her father with the girl’s fascination with men). Could this be a scarcely acknowledged element in their relationship that adds to the tensions that flare up between Eva and her father from time to time? It is up to the viewer to think so or not.
I Have Electric Dreams is in essence a naturalistic film but one scene set in a carnival sideshow where a sexy figure transforms into an ape rather too self-consciously symbolises Eva’s sexual preoccupations. In contrast, the scene in which Martín becomes aware of Dove's involvement with his daughter is totally persuasive and compelling and the film’s final scenes are beautifully judged. Apparently Maurel would like to offer us another film featuring the same characters but looking at them from a different perspective. Let us hope that it happens.
Original title: Tengo sueños eléctricos.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Daniela Marín Navarro, Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez, Vivian Rodríguez Barquero, Adriana Castro García, José Pablo Segreda Johanning, Mayté Ortega Floris, Erik Reise Modol, Diego van der Lat.
Dir Valentina Maurel, Pro Grégoire Debailly and Benoit Roland, Screenplay Valentina Maurel, Ph Nicolás Wong Díaz, Pro Des Guillaume Landon and Mauricio Esquivel, Ed Bertrand Conard, Costumes Mauricio Esquivel.
Wrong Men North/Geko Films/Tres Tigres-Mubi.
104 mins. Belgium/France/Costa Rica. 2022. UK Rel: 16 August 2023. Available on Mubi. No Cert.
