Argentine road film follows a girl with a gift

Many children would like to believe that they can communicate with animals, forming a special relationship that only they understand. But for a nice girl in the heart of director Iván Fund’s Message (Message), Listening to dogs, cats, turtles, horses and all kinds of fauna is the vocation of money, and the one that practices with a lot of gentle care.

This minimalist unusuality of the road film follows Anika (Anika Bootz) and her caregivers, Myriam (Mara Bestelli) and Roger (Marcelo Subiotto), while touring the Argentine village selling girls in “Natural Telepathy”. Claiming that she can communicate with pet souls, Anika connects animal “messages” – whether directly or through voice mails – owners who want to know what Rex or Fluffy or Biscuit actually think. In turn, the girl and her guards live free landing #vanlife, wandering the earth like the old circus troops and parking their RV wherever they want.

With his lavish black and white photo and relaxed vibrations, Message It brings to the mind of the 1973 Peter Boganovich Boganovich Classics Paper monthwho had a girl and a man on his way to America from the time of depression. Argentina shown in the Fund movie also feels like he is going through some difficult times, though the director focuses more on a good main trip with a trio from place to place as they expelled from Anika’s magic powers.

The question is, of course, whether this is all fraud or the right thing. But the movie is never dealing with this problem, nor does it add any fundamental plot to its setting. This is a bit unhappy because traveling with Anika and her Huckere is a completely pleasant experience, even if it is one that never develops into the whole story. As such, Message The festival circle will be driven, but it will be harder to sell for international distributors.

Working with talented DP Gustave Schiaffin, Fund, which is a trained cinematographer himself, creates an aesthetics with a low budget with a high contrasting one, which remembers early Jim Jarmusch acts like A stranger of paradise and Down by lawor wim wenders movies like Kings Roads. Taking a simple beauty of nature, whether it’s domesticated animals at home or horses wandering freely the streets of an abandoned city, he makes it Message It is easy to watch despite the lack of any fundamental narrative tension.

Sometimes the movie plays more like a documentary than fiction, even if what is happening is obviously a script. The charismatic zootz is so natural to make Anika’s craziness, which include repeating what puppies or kittens are telepathically speaking to her, they feel completely normal, almost as she is bored with her own supernatural abilities.

Meanwhile, Myriam and Roger do their best to keep their jobs, share flyers, collect payments and set up interviews from the TV news to connect Anika’s talents. Are these two grandparents of her grandparents or just raised money from her? Again, the movie does not fully answer that question.

One touching scene shows them to take Anika to visit their mother at a psychiatric hospital, but there are not many dialogues between them and that is the last thing we hear about it. There are other moments of mature with history – including the fact that Roger was once a real circus clown, as he discovered old photos – which remain an Nexploled Fund, which is more interested in maintaining a particular mood.

He manages to do this for 90 minutes, twisting us into a world where man, animal and child appear to be on the same peaceful plane. At one point late in the action, the van stopped along the road, where Anika exits and approaches the wild capital that exits the brush. Does she read her mind or just admire like any other child? It doesn’t really matter: this is a movie in which the medium, in all senses of expression, counts more than a message.