Magical girl

Poster Magical girl

Magical girl.

2015
Color - 127mn - Original version with French subtitles
Spain.
Thriller.
  • 10 September 2020 21:00
    Showroom 300

    Screening presented by Marjane Satrapi
Direction: Carlos Vermut.
Production: Pedro Hernández.
Screenplay: Carlos Vermut.
Editing: Emma Tusell.
Photography: Santiago Racaj.
Music by: Alessio Nanni.
With: Bárbara Lennie, José Sacristán, Luis Bermejo, Israel Elejalde.

Three characters are plunged into a maelstrom of deceit. Barbara is a beautiful but psychologically unstable young woman that her husband tries to control. Damian, a convict with a murky past, dares not leave his prison for fear of seeing her again. Luis, the loving father of a sick little girl whose last dream he wants to fulfill, becomes a blackmailer, unaware of the dangers he risks.

After Diamond Flash in 2011, still unreleased in our parts, director-scriptwriter-illustrator Carlos Vermut, with Magical Girl, signs a twisted manipulative thriller crossed by occasional surrealistic visions, influenced by horror cinema as well as comic books and mangas. A former collaborator of Álex de la Iglesia, he reveals a mastery that his next feature film Quién te cantará (2018), will confirm. Barbara Lennie, seen in Rodrigo Sorogoyen's El Reino or Asghar Farhadi's Everybody Knows, plays one of the most striking female characters in contemporary genre cinema, at the same time a venomous seductress and a victim of her condition.

Marjane Satrapi

It was at the San Sebastián Film Festival and many of the films were "difficult". And not in a good way. Then suddenly comes Magical Girl, an odd and yet infinitely human film, touching and upsetting. Unusual and powerful, with a bold storyline, it stood out and by far. So we members of the jury awarded it the Best Film and Best Director prizes. I think it's one of the best European films from the 2010 years, along with Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster.