Fever Dream: Moms, Kids, And Madness Under the Argentinian Sun
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B+
In the wonderfully weird and atmospheric Fever Dream, Peruvian director Claudia Llosa (The Milk of Sorrow) explores a mother’s guilt and fear in a fable of physical and supernatural contamination.
The theme of maternal anxiety is clearer in the original Spanish title “Distancia de Rescate” by Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin’s 2014 novella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Literally translated as “rescue distance,” the title refers to the distance a mother feels safely separated from child.
Dolores Fonzi and Maria Valverde in Fever Dream.
In the tradition of Daphne du Maurier (Don’t Look Now, Rebecca), the story weaves together the natural and supernatural with a tantalizing ambiguity. The hazy, over-heated atmosphere (shot by Oscar Faura in intense close-ups and hazy medium shots) recalls something of the woozy spirit of Lucretia Martel’s La Cienega.
Fever Dream begins as what appears to be a horror movie: Intense close-ups of an ear, a fluttering eye, as a young woman, Amanda (María Valverde) is being dragged across the ground. Meanwhile, there’s a voice-over between her and an unseen boy, which concerns “something worm-like” which has invaded her body. The boy says he is taking her to a garden, and insists she recount precisely the events that have led her to this helpless moment.
We flashback to Amanda, a refined young Spanish woman, arriving at her father’s rural Argentinian home for a summer vacation with her six-year-old daughter, Nina (Guillermina Sorribes Liotta), waiting for her businessman husband to join them. On their first day a woman about Amanda’s age, Carola (Dolores Fonzi), arrives bringing buckets of fresh water, because she says, visitors do not always like the water here.
Carola has a brooding sensuality, chain-smokes, wears tattoos and a gold bikini, and doesn’t act like a local, which Amanda observes aloud. “Thanks for the compliment,” says Carola wryly. She is, she assures Amanda, a born and bred local, though she dreams of escape. The two women bond, note the parallels of their inattentive husbands, and go swimming together in a lake.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
This is, intriguingly, all flashback. The boy in the voice-over keeps demanding specific details, and Amana editorializes as her memories unfold: “There’s a kind of fascination between us — and moments of repulsion,” she says. The boy keeps demanding more details, while periodically interrupting, “That’s not important.”
Carola has a background story, though she warns Amanda that if she tells it, Amanda may not want to see her anymore. She, too, is a mother, but she is alienated from her 12-year-old son, David, who she describes as a “monster” since the boy became sick, seven years before.
The boy (Emilio Vodanovich), who is about 12, lives with her, but in a quasi-feral state, barely communicating with his parents and spending his days running wild in the woods.
Carola describes a series of events that led to her loss of a home and the catastrophe with her son. She and her horse breeder husband, Omar (Germán Palacios) borrowed a high-price stud horse from a neighbouring rancher for three days to breed their two mares, a chance to fulfill their fantasies of wealth and success. A magical silhouette shot sees Omar standing behind one mare, their shadows merging to form a centaur. He goes from the stable to make love to his wife.
But when Omar is away the next day, the stallion escaped into the surrounding fields. The animal is found by a nearby stream and Carola brings the horse back home, but something is wrong. That night, the animal is on its side on the ground, groaning.
David, too, is seriously ill. Too far away to reach a doctor, Carla takes the ailing child by boat to nearby faith healer. The woman performs a ritual involving a rope and a bucket which she says will weaken the “poison” in his system by splitting part of his spirit to migrate part of it to a different body. Since then, Carola says, she does not know the boy as her son.
Amanda’s initial reaction is skeptical, but she’s deeply rattled, moved by sympathy for the mistreated boy, and fear for her own daughter, Nina.
The story builds toward a revelation, which is a bit mundane for the strange, complicated events that have transpired. Llosa’s film is best appreciated not as a mystery with a solution but a multi-level experience — a representation of a near-death experience, a psychodrama of temptation and punishment, and a hot pang of maternal angst.
Fever Dream. Directed by Claudia Llosa and Samanta Schwebin. Starring María Valverde, Dolores Fonzi, Germán Palacios, Guillermo Pfening, Emilio Vodanovich, Guillermina Sorribes, Marcelo Michinaux, and Cristina Banegas. Available in select theatres October 8 and on Netflix on October 13.