Review: Valentina Maurel's "Forever Your Maternal Animal" Explores Fractured Family and Existential Displacement
By
Kate Erbland
15d ago· 8 min readenReview
100/100
Golden Brown
Bagelometer↗
Hot, fresh, and worth queueing round the block for.
Score100TypereviewSentimentpositive
Summary
A review of Valentina Maurel's film "Forever Your Maternal Animal," a follow-up to her Locarno hit "I Have Electric Dreams." The film explores existential displacement and fractured family dynamics through the lives of three Costa Rican women. Drawing from a poem by her mother and a dream vision, Maurel crafts a sophisticated drama about self-discovery and discomfiting existential themes in a post-truth world.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledForever Your Maternal Animal cuts closer to the bone than many movies of its kind in conveying that sense of discomfiting, existential displacement, especially in a post-truth world.
With a poem written by her mother, after which the film is titled, and a vision her partner had dreamed as reference points, the French-Costa Rican director fashions a work that riffs on her first feature.
An already fractured family drifts further apart.
In the director’s stirring follow-up to “I Have Electric Dreams,” an already fractured family drifts further apart.
