A fading television host, a shady producer and three bratty junior crew members walk into a hostel in rural Argentina. The setup – five self-involved New Yorkers in a sleepy, modest, provincial town to film “a whole new series on subcultures around the world” – practically begs for a punchline, or at least some fizzy, kinetic chaos.
Magic Farm, Argentine-Spanish film-maker Amalia Ulman’s second feature (after 2021’s El Planeta), certainly tries to stir the pot, throwing its characters together into a hodgepodge of strange and lightly surreal situations. But for all its digressive meetups and self-assured one-liners – “maybe you should stop taking so much ketamine,” etc – it can’t land the joke.
That’s partly because what should be comic ineptitude generally comes off as contrived, or playing on overused (though not inaccurate) tropes of self-absorbed, callous Americans. The crew, led by the frazzled and insecure Edna (Chloë Sevigny, able to conjure a few sparks out of a slight role) and her producer-husband (Simon Rex), arrive at the under-prepared hostel on a wave of entitlement and dramatic exhaustion, to find a contact for a project about a bizarre, bunny ear-wearing musician. (I would generously describe their TV show as a send-up of Vice News). They find neither, because thanks to the incompetence (and bad Spanish) of producer Jeff (Alex Wolff, unfortunately convincing as an overwritten whiny fuckboy), they’re in the wrong country.
What’s a flailing crew to do? The producer-husband departs to deal with a secret sexual harassment scandal. Edna mopes about, mostly to allow for the indelible image of Sevigny wearing Margiela shoes in the completely wrong environment. And the junior staff – Jeff, Justin (Joe Apollonio) and the Spanish-speaking Elena (Ulman) – decide to fabricate a trend for a contrived documentary, enlisting locals to play devotees of a made-up religious cult. The increasingly ridiculous production process should be funny – uncanny situations for a cursed project, you can imagine – but instead feel flat, deflated by the bald and, frankly, boring reveals of the Americans’ messy personal lives and a persistent hint of smugness.
Ulman’s roving focus does, at least, allow for several of the bemused locals – the kind-hearted and befuddled hostel manager (Guillermo Jacubowicz), accidental fixer Popa (Valeria Lois) and her Rapunzel-esque, very online adult daughter (Camila del Campo) – moments to charm with by far the most natural dialogue and limber, offhand humor. Del Campo, a model, particularly shines as a lustful, criminally bored foil to the hapless film crew, at once curious about and skeptical of their intentions.
This all unfolds amid an impending health crisis, at least according to the logline, though you would barely know it – said crisis is barely mentioned, unreflected in the film’s generally upbeat, slightly absurd tone and irrelevant to the hijinks and hookups that feel overlong even at 93 minutes. It’s one of several odd combinations that are more awkward than provocatively jarring – a mix of too-light understatement and overdoing it that fizzles into limp farce.
Still, there is visual pep to the meandering (with a jaunty score by Burke Battelle). Ulman’s openness to the mundane but memorable images of this small world – its overstuffed shops and dirt roads, its farm animals and bespoke churches – make for a film that’s never boring to look at, even as the characters aimlessly amble about. (Though overuse of the fisheye lens and GoPro-style cameras attached to many a cute stray dog aims for an edgy, off-kilter sensibility the writing never achieves.)
At best, Ulman and cinematographer Carlos Rigo Bellver capture the open-hearted gameness of this unnamed town, a place that’s believably easygoing and a little strange. Some place you could dismiss, but eventually settle in, even come to love. Magic Farm’s young Americans leave with unconvincing sentimentality and unearned tears – most of this concept works better on paper than in practice – as well as a few moments where the seemingly laidback direction finds a brief, hypnotizing groove. There’s bits of misplaced humor, a firm sense of place and promising performances, but frustratingly little magic to be found here.
Magic Farm is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
