52 Films by Women Vol 9. 2. Magic Farm (Director: Amalia Ulman)

 

Picture: A long way from New York, producer-host Edna (Chloë Sevigny) greets a horse in a scene from Spanish-Argentinian director, Amalia Ulman's comedy, 'Magic Farm'. Still courtesy of Mubi/The Match Factory.

Magic Farm, Argentina-Spanish writer-director Amalia Ulman’s follow up to her 2021 feature debut, El Planeta, is the sort of film that looks like it was made when the director’s original planned project set in her home country fell through. She has assembled a name American cast (Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff, Simon Rex, Joe Apollonio) and gives them precious little to do. They bicker, panic, embrace, have toilet difficulties or rush to catch the next flight back to New York over the course of a flimsy lightweight empty empanada of a movie. Yet there is pleasure to be had watching this consolation prize, contractual obligation. It clears the moviegoing palate like a sorbet, making you ready to taste something new and exciting. For his second completed feature, Quentin Tarantino gave us Pulp Fiction. For hers, Ulman offers Go Pro shots of animals.

The title is apropos to nothing. The film is like a tin labelled ‘dog food’ that contains a banana. Sevigny plays Edna, the producer-host of a cable television series about weird cultural fads - WTF TV rather than Music Television. Her small crew fly around the world reporting on the cool and unusual. Only they have been given a bum steer by a twenty-year-old intern. They have travelled to Saint Cristóbal in Argentina hoping to find a musician who inspires others to jump around in rabbit outfits. In my youth, the children’s show ‘Tiswas’ featured a young boy in a black rabbit suit singing along to Art Garfunkel’s ‘Bright Eyes’ as featured in the animated film Watership Down. Creative Lab – Edna’s company – needed a time machine. Only their contact, an elderly female preacher who posts Super Carlitos videos – has disappeared. We see her sit down in her office, speak to her son on a landline, and receive some news. Edna’s crew – business partner Dave (Rex), feature-producer Jeff (Wolff), boom operator Justin (Apollonio) and Spanish-speaking fixer Elena (Amalia Ulman herself) scramble to salvage something. Actually, Dave just scrams, having received a call that he has been named in a lawsuit alleging inappropriate behaviour. Everyone but Edna knows what is going on. She mopes, confiding in a horse, because a horse can’t make promises it won’t keep.

The comedy is humour adjacent. During his brief stay, Dave wanders around looking for a vape charger. ‘Do you have one?’ he asks the perplexed hotel manager (Guillermo Jacubowicz). Elena can’t sleep. She asks the manager to deal with the mosquitos. He offers her a spray can of ‘Raid’. ‘I can’t use that, it’s toxic,’ she replies. The four rooms they were promised turn into two, which is about as disappointing as the Four Rooms Tarantino promised in his Pulp Fiction follow-up.

Yet in this small village, where Justin teaches the manager’s four-year-old son how to skateboard, there is an opportunity to fake a trend using available materials. A woman knows the preacher and invites the crew inside. She is good at organising and can sew costumes, although there are only two fabrics available. The Creative Lab has a budget, though as Elena implores her colleagues, ‘keep the receipts’. There is a comedy set piece where one of the men tries to buy three sim cards at 200 pesos each. He is charged over 3000 pesos. The shopkeeper even takes $20 from his wallet. ‘I think I got ripped off,’ he tells the group. ‘Never mind, you helped someone,’ consoles Elena. ‘Did you get a receipt?’ ‘Yes, I mean, no,’ he confesses feebly.

Pictured: Jeff (Alex Wolff) and Manchi (Camila del Campo) in a scene from 'Magic Farm', a comedy set in Argentina written and directed by Amalia Ulman. Still courtesy of Mubi/The Match Factory

No one gets super angry in the film. They might look disappointed or unimpressed, but there’s no space for loud histrionics. The result is a film that is reassuring. The world may be going to pot, with climate change, a coup in America, potential defeat for Ukraine, the fall of the Democratic Republic of Congo, famine in Sudan, and permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, but Ulman isn’t going to contribute to the world’s list of problems. There’s money in the account, potential and the possibility to make new connections.

Of the Americans, Sevigny features the least. She’s too cool for a sub-plot. We watch her stride around in long boots, sturdy legs exposed between footwear and skirt, replacing potential with practicality. Early on, she considers whether she would describe something as ‘amazing’. Unbridled enthusiasm isn’t in her vocabulary. She says it anyway, even though she knows a lot better. Edna surprises Dave before his departure by telling him she has his vape charger.

Ulman is Sevigny’s opposite. Elena is less than three months pregnant. Her baby is the size of a blueberry. She accepts that it will show soon, and that she has to tell Edna. She decides to go to term. Will she involve the father? ‘No.’  

Wolff is a joy to watch. He grasps every scene as if it was the last life jacket – to heck with the women and children – and mines it for comedy. Jeff doesn’t just cheat on one woman, rather several. He doesn’t just reject one type of food because he’s a vegan but all of them. In one scene, Jeff is offered pizza but refuses it. He is offered the only vegetarian empanada on the plate, takes a bite then throws it over his shoulder. He wants water but is offered juice that he spits back into his glass. Finally, Popa (Valeria Lois), the mother of Manchi (Camila del Campo), a teenager with a large birthmark on her face with whom Jeff has been flirting, offers him Argentinian ice cream, ‘the best ice cream in the world’. Jeff is helpless as he is spoon-fed multiple flavours. You sense Popa and Manchi are triumphant, breaking him like a horse.

Manchi looks Jeff up on the internet and masturbates as she listens to his voice. As she tells him later, she’s horny. She imagines that as an American, Jeff will be different, but when he refuses to make love to her – which she interprets as revulsion to her birthmark – he ‘is like everyone else’. In an earlier scene, Jeff is drawn to her birthmarks, including one above her right breast. ‘May I?’ he asks, dipping his head to kiss it. She nods. ‘Consent,’ Jeff cries, ensuring that Manchi knows no violation has occurred.

Apollonio strides through the film with a degree of cool. Justin takes his shirt off when helping the hotel manager with the washing up. The manager’s middle-aged man breasts contrast with Justin’s smooth torso. Bringing food and seeing the two shirtless men, a female neighbour is shocked. In an earlier scene, Justin attaches a microphone pack to the manager’s waistband. There is a frisson. Then he passes a microphone cable up the manager’s shirt. You sense the pleasure that the manager suppresses.

The film is interspersed with shots of animals that roam the village streets as freely as any human. A cat and dog stand next to one another. In a pen, piglets feed off their mother and break off in unison, as if breast milk was magically switched off. There is a running joke about banners being made to advertise personal statements. ‘Don’t come home until you’ve broken off the relationship,’ says one. Jeff spots a piece of graffiti that he photographs with his phone. Manchi translates. ‘If he makes you laugh, suck his dick.’ Jeff is taken aback.

Townspeople are corralled into videotaped auditions. A tune is recorded on a keyboard, though Justin complains, ‘make it sound less like a duck’. Eventually, the feature is shot, though one local woman stares at the camera. ‘Prep her,’ yells Edna. There is however a coda, given the parlous state of the company.

Throughout we learn that the chemicals used from crop dusting affect the local population. Children have died. The New York crew is oblivious to the story they could tell, a feature that could help make chemical companies more accountable. At the finale of the film, a low flying plane roars above them. They flee, aware of the danger to their lives. The chemical, we are told, causes birth defects.

A handful of scenes feature a tattoo-armed local man whose growth has been stunted. He has a beautiful young girlfriend whose nose is pierced. Ulman never ridicules the villagers but doesn’t go deeply into their stories either.

When you visit a farm, you share the air with animals, pet them, and convince yourself that you have communed with nature. Justin and the hotel manager share a hug that hints at something more; Justin confesses to having a difficult relationship with his father. Jeff embraces Edna before she leaves, unable to control himself. Elena collects a receipt.

Reviewed at Berlin International Film Festival, Cubix (Screen Six), Alexanderplatz, Saturday 22 February 2025, 22:00 screening.