I Live Here Now at SUFF – review
I Live Here Now is playing at the Sydney Underground Film Festival. Addy Fong checks it out for us:
Haunting and impressively visual horror I Live Here Now follows the story of Rose (Lucy Fry), an actor who, haunted by her traumatic past, finds herself trapped in a remote hotel. Written and directed by Julie Pacino, daughter of well-known actor Al Pacino, her debut feature presents audiences with the moral dilemma surrounding the lack of autonomy women feel and with their body packaged in the form of a body horror. This feeling of disconnect and discomfort is universal to the female experience, of feeling trapped and powerless, is perfectly placed within the world of horror which parallels this lack of control women often feel in society today.
Separated by and presented in chapters as if a book, the film’s bright, oversaturated colours and atmospheric soundscape create an unease which carries through the film’s duration. Pacino creates a surrealist unnerve strengthened by the layers of symbolism seen throughout, tackling themes around body image, weight, abortion, infertility, and childhood trauma to name a few.
I Live Here Now also casts Sheryl Lee of Twin Peaks fame, who plays a creepy mother character named Martha, set out to govern Rose’s body. For those aware of David Lynch’s work and the character Lee played, Laura Palmer, there is this parallel felt in the helpless seen in Palmer’s character and that of Pacino’s Rose. Both films speak of a woman feeling trapped in a circumstance in which they do not want to be. Audiences may connect the film’s influences, describing it as perhaps Lynchian, observing influences from early horror films such as Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria, thanks to the vibrant use of technicolor, blending in with psychological horror as seen in Herk Harvey’s 1962 Carnival of Souls. I Live Here Now ’s use of bright technicolour is also seen in Anna Biller’s 2016 film The Love Witch with both films presenting horror from a feminist perspective and exposing the true horror, the world women find themselves in. There is both a fear and eventual empowerment women feel and eventually face, one of which the horror genre itself pays tribute to.
Pacino’s film is impressive but nothing new plot wise, playing on a few overly used horror tropes that keeps you intrigued throughout, but audiences may tire of this quickly as the film plays out. Sound is a powerful tool used throughout in creating the atmosphere of the film along with its use to evoke sudden jump scares, again a classic trope used in horror. A hesitation perhaps is with most horror films featuring beautiful women trapped in a house and carrying trauma, is the objectification, sexualisation, and victimisation of the female as weak and almost glorifying this aspect which could be seen as unhealthy. Despite this, I Live Here Now is a thoroughly enjoyable film, with a line Rose delivers in an audition tape speaking to the heart of all who have lived through horror and pain, ‘Our sadness will never go away, but it can’t hurt us anymore.’
I Live Here Now plays at Dendy Newtown on 13th September. Details here.
Check out the full SUFF schedule.
Review by Addy Fong.
