Strawberry Mansion (2021)
Written & directed by Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney
Starring Kentucker Audley, Albert Birney, Penny Fuller
Running time 1 hour, 31 minutes
Currently unrated but contains dream and nightmare imagery of a fantastic and whimsical nature
by Hunter Bush
Strawberry Mansion initially drew my attention because I had a limited window in which to catch a flick and at about 90 minutes, it fit in quite nicely. When you're presented with as vast an assortment of films as the Fantasia Festival offers, that's as good a metric as any. I was immediately greeted by the bookish-looking Preble (co-writer and co-director Kentucker Audley) in an all pink room desperate for something to eat until an aggressively jovial friend appears (Linas Phillips) with a bucket of Cap'n Kelly chicken and a two-liter Red Rocket cola.
This, turns out, is a dream and Preble is a dream auditor in a future where the government taxes your dreams. In a later sequence we're given examples - dream about a field with a hot air balloon in the sky and that balloon is gonna cost you half a buck; playing a violin to summon a skeleton in a cemetery? The violin will set you back $0.17. The skeleton appears to be tax-exempt though.
Preble buys some Cap'n Kelly, including an absolutely disgusting-sounding "chicken shake" which is exactly what you fear it is, and sets off on his latest assignment: to audit elderly artist Bella (Penny Fuller) who the bureau appears to have no reliable records on. She's your typical post-flower power creative dabbler: whimsical, kooky and largely unconcerned with technology. When Preble sees that she's still recording her dreams on VHS tapes, he informs her that the "air chip system" - which we see earlier record Preble pink room chicken dinner dream onto what looks like a SIM card - has been mandatory for many years. Her response is "I guess I lost track of the time" with a smile and a shrug.
As Bella, Penny Fuller is perfect. The film has a slim cast and she's a perfect counterpoint to Preble, who Audler plays as a cipher - very quiet, seemingly always a little suspicious and confused (a perfect surrogate for an audience thrust into this strange possible future of 2035). As reserved as he is, she's boisterous; as neutral as he is, she's warm.
The tendency, I think, in describing dreams in cinema is to describe how they look rather than how they feel. For the most part the dreams depicted in Strawberry Mansion feel joyous. Even summoning a skeleton in a cemetery feels more like knocking for your next door neighbor than anything dark or dangerous. As the story progresses, and reality becomes thin, there are some almost Lynchian qualities to the way the dreams behave as they degrade, but going full David Lynch just wouldn't mesh as well with the tone the rest of the film carries. As a result we get dream denizens with cardboard animal heads contrasted with photorealistic ones when things get more serious.
The story that unfolds feels like Philip K. Dick by way of The Princess Bride, combining surrealistic interpretations of fairytale-adjacent imagery to tell a story about a semi-dystopian near future and what falling in love might look like to the people living in one of them. For fans of all the reference points I mentioned above as well as the works of directors like Michel Gondry, Strawberry Mansion is a recommendation without reservation.
Strawberry Mansion is on demand for the duration of Fantasia Fest. Get tickets HERE.
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