The Message

Bluesky

Iván Fund is interested in the sweet spot where the everyday meets the potential supernatural. In his previous film Dusk Stone, a monster of sorts clambered through a tale of grief. This time around the action revolves around a psychic connection with animals.

Fund reunites with his leads Marcelo Subiotto and Mara Bestelli - who are also a couple in real life - for a lighter toned road trip, although the writer/director continues to be more interested in mood than plot.

Subiotto and Bestelli play Roger and Myriam, who are driving the backroads of rural Argentina in an ageing campervan with their young granddaughter Anika (Anika Bootz, Fund’s stepdaughter, packing plenty of pintsize charisma). She can, apparently, form a psychic connection with pets - living or dead - revealing their thoughts. One cat owner, for example, is told their pet “feels like a failure” over a lost toy, elsewhere we’ll meet a grieving hedgehog. It might not be a massively lucrative business, but it seems to be a steady one that the whole family take seriously, although whether this is because they truly believe in Anika’s powers or just the power of her ability to extract cash from pet owners is left for us to decide. So much, in fact, is left to our imagination that Fund does run the risk of the film feeling slightly underpowered over all, although it has moments of striking beauty.

Gustavo Schiaffino crisp black and white photography blends with an easygoing shooting style. As we take a camino around Argentina, the cosmos of Anika’s surroundings is also revealed. In place of a regular dashboard ornament is a large china Alsatian that looks as though it might once have taken pride of place on a mantelpiece, dinners are shared sandwiches, with crisps folded carefully inside, and the fritzy shower means a hair wash might be concluded with a bottle of water. Fund encourages us to tune in to the energies of the trio, the subtle shifts of mood, shared moments of understanding or joy.

Outside the van, Anika also has encounters, with horses and with a curious capybara - the connection between them simultaneously magical and completely natural.

That Anika is getting older is marked by the loss of baby teeth, the suggestion of childhood belief systems starting to fall away with them even if she, like every child who ever lived, is still desperate to win a toy from the crane grabber amusement machine. Much of the (in)action is accompanied by a bluesy score from Mauro Mourelos, with a mournful solo brass repeated refrain. Occasionally, the Pet Shop Boys’ You Are Always On My Mind sings out from the dashboard player, at once a danceable favourite for Anika, but with an undercurrent of something more melancholic and yearning that speaks to a non-professional stop-off the family will make.

The world may be passing by but it’s really Anika that Fund is interested in and Bootz more than repays his camera’s thoughtful gaze with her warm but enigmatic presence. Perhaps her greatest gift is that she shares with most children - the ability to read the emotional energy of the adults around her and respond to it with disarmingly effective immediacy.