“Do you have vape charger para aquí?” Amalia Ulman’s surreal, uneven satire skewers Americans abroad and alt-media while vaguely evoking such deeper social issues as glyphosate poisoning. Very vaguely.
The returning 1990s icon Chloë Sevigny plays Edna, the insecure, acid-tongued girlboss of Creative Lab, a short-form documentary show – think Vice TV – chronicling bizarre global trends.
The content’s condescending cultural imperialism is compounded by Edna’s Brooklynite hipster crew, including Jeff (Alex Wolff), a ketamine-popping playboy who leads the way to the rural Argentinian town of San Cristobal on the hunt for a singer in a rabbit suit known as Super Carlitos. Inevitably, they have arrived in the wrong South American country.
The muddled, entitled characters do muddled, entitled things. Edna’s romantic and professional partner (Simon Rex) soon retreats to New York to deal with improprieties. Justin (Joe Apollonio) falls for the local hotel’s receptionist (Guillermo Jacubowicz). Jeff sets his sights on a local beauty, Manchi (Camila del Campo).
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Assisted by the secretly pregnant, Spanish-speaking Elena (played by Ulman), the bumbling crew enlist locals to enact a fake story about a cult.
The cinematographer Carlos Rigo Bellver’s frequent use of fish-eye lenses and cameras strapped to horses and dogs is emblematic of the larger problems at the heart of Ulman’s ambitious, sprawling follow-up to El Planeta, her much-loved debut.
The quirky textures, formal radicalism and scattershot satire occasionally produce memorable moments. Burke Battelle’s whimsical score amplifies the offbeat charm, but the comedic tone is ill met by tonal inconsistencies, flat punchlines and a wilful lack of momentum. Cross-cultural satire lurks unassertively in the margins.
It’s a pleasing enough vibe, nonetheless – Sevigny and Wolff channel Gen X-worthy self-deprecation. Del Campo and a wandering horse come close to delivering the magic promised by the title.
