El Planeta

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Writer-director-star Amalia Ulman’s first feature is a deadpan comedy about the confiding, codependent and contentious relationship between a mother and daughter who are on the verge of eviction from their cold and cramped apartment in a coastal city in Spain. Ulman — a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes video essays, conceptual museum installations and Instagram performance art — cast her real-life mother as her onscreen counterpart. Their lived-in chemistry and improvisatory banter lend an offbeat comedic pathos to the hapless duo who blithely live beyond their means as the Spanish economy implodes around them following the 2008 financial crisis. Directed in a New Wave style that recalls the VTIFF 2013 hit Frances Ha (with shades of early Jim Jarmusch), El Planeta provides much needed comic relief at a moment in time when the cost of living continues to soar despite an unprecedented global crisis of a different making. ~Luke Baynes