2025, Bryan Fuller (writer of Hannibal) -- download
Also, pre-amblish in saying, its only mid-January but I predict this will be one of my favourite films for the entire year. As Kent said, "What a fucking delight."
Also, as Kent said, "What if Leon: The Professional was made by Jean-Pierre Jeunet [sic] instead of Luc Besson".
We Agree.
Tempted to just point at Kent's post and say, "Yeah what he said," and that wouldn't be the first time I have thought that in the 10+ years of this blog, but its still cheating.
I am [mostly] not going to recap. But this movie is about a little girl ("Erora" ... "Aurora" ... "Uhrora" ... "AURORA" ... "That's what I said.") who fears the monster under her bed, the one which will eat you if you walk on the floor. It arrives one night, as a mote of dust through an open window -- I was thinking how unclean is this city that finger sized balls of fluff float through windows -- and evolves into a coot wittle fuzzy wuzzy bunny-kin, i.e. a dust bunny. After the thing evolves even further, into a magic-powered (how could it not be) eating machine, and devours her parents, she knows she has to do something.
Living across the hall is the impeccably dressed... OK, maybe not impeccable, he is not Hannibal, but more eclectically dressed Intriguing Neighbour (Mads Mikkelsen, Polar) -- nicely patterned track suits meet silk pyjamas. How does she know he can help her? She doesn't but after following him one night to China Town, she sees him in action against a dragon. Well, a bunch of China Town villains underneath a dragon-dance costume, but her imagination sees what she needs to see.
Aurora (Sophie Sloan, Chemistry of Death) procures his services by robbing the collection plate of a church. He questions how she knows a word like "procure". And thus begins a battle of wills & wits as she gives him no choice but to be involved in slaying her monster.
In case you need the warning, hereafter are Spoilers.
The monster is quite real. She wished him up, ages ago. This is not the first foster family it has eaten. And some of those foster families were nice. But, in little girl logic, she also wished up her Intriguing Neighbour, to deal with it. Meanwhile he is ... an assassin? Its never explicitly said but he does violence, has enemies and a handler. The handler (Sigourney Weaver, The Gorge) is presented as many have been in such movies -- you approach her in a funky restaurant, where she sits at a table that affords a view of all who come and go. She is mysterious, callous and thinks Aurora should die for having witnessed what he does for a living. Except, when they enter her apartment under the cover of nighttime, they are in the monster's domain, and they step on the floor. Gobble gobble.
Migawd this movie is lovely to look at. Sure, as we know (and love), Fuller is known for his shows having a particular look & feel. Hannibal was his most straight-laced show but the costuming and set decorating was out of this world. Dust Bunny is set in a uber-stylized New York City that I had to build towards believing it was actually NYC. At times, I thought it was an unnamed Eastern European city, at times, it was a London where Aurora might run into Paddington. But eventually, enough set pieces appear to establish it well as NYC, but one unlike any reality we live in. And the apartment building they live puts the Arconia to shame, such wild aesthetics! I swear the wallpaper in the entry hallway of Aurora's apartment changed depending on the mood of the scene.
This is a movie that wears its whimsy on its brocade sleeve. But that's to be expected in a movie about a monster from under the bed, but also in the Fuller oeuvre, its grim. The monster basically eats almost everyone by the end of the movie, but there is also a bonding scene through body dismemberment. It is so much like a proper faery tale in that it is colourful, magical and entirely violent. And delightful!
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