Sundance 2021: Mayday
Karen Cinorre's unplaceable war-picture-cum-fantasy, Mayday, is an extraordinarily inventive film that, at almost every turn, evades categorization. Ana (Grace Van Patten) rolls up to her shift at a local restaurant as the staff scrambles to prepare for a wedding party—the timetable has been shifted due to ominous grey clouds threatening the festivities. Despite a blossoming romance, her daily life seems oppressive. Her boss is violently abusive, the chaos of her work is miserable, and she seeks refuge to cry in a walk-in freezer; the universal safe haven anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows. When the power goes out, she's tasked with flipping the circuit breaker. As she does, a spark lights up the room, transforming the space around her. Deep blues and brilliant golds cast the mundane kitchen in an otherworldly hue and, like Alice of Lewis Carroll's classic novel, she is beckoned into a strange world, this time not through a tree stump, but an oven left ajar. The portal releases her into an extraordinary landscape: a beach eroded by artillery shells and inhabited by World War II-era soldiers left adrift and befuddled by the strangeness of the place. She's quickly acquainted with Marsha (Mia Goth), a ruthless and supremely confident leader who leads a band of sisters including Gert (SoKo), a French woman who plays the role of intelligence officer, and Bea (Havana Rose Liu), a soft-spoken, compassionate comrade. The three women act as sirens, beckoning soldiers to their doom via radio, steering them into storms, and crashing them on the beach of their island. It is framed as an aid to the war effort, but gradually, Marsha's methods become more and more brutal and her survivalist mentality is slowly peeled back to reveal more sadistic motivations.
Despite being so weird, with so many disparate elements intertwining, a large majority of it works beautifully together. Cinorre, in a post-screening Q&A cited the classic The Wizard of Oz, Greek myth, and, in particular, the myth of the Siren, as strong influences. But, she said that she wanted to revise the coda to Victor Fleming's cinematic classic. She was always irked by the town's assertions that it was all fantasy in that film, and here she provides room for Ana's truth, discovered on those verdant shores, to not be overwritten by put-downs or dismissals. I was reminded of famed game designer/director Hideo Kojima and his unique brand of influence amalgamation. The hybridization of war picture and a tale of sisterhood works wonderfully, especially since Cinorre steadily complicates its morality, giving these women trapped in a sunkissed limbo an arc that emphasizes compassion through strength and strength through compassion. There are, however, moments that feel oddly superfluous. They are fun in their indulgent weirdness and, by and large, I'm just glad this vision feels so fresh and so clearly what Cinorre wanted. But a dance number midway through feels both a bizarre stumbling block during the film's otherwise well-plotted arc and wonderfully unexpected—on the other hand, Cinnore doesn't push certain areas hard enough. The characters, when boiled down to their essentials, fit tropes you've seen before, but the actresses do such a wonderful job breathing such charismatic life into all of them, that the performances work.
Visually, this is a marvel. Director of photography and partner to Cinorre, Sam Levy, has an eye for composition, lighting, and color that gives the entire film a gorgeous, verdant, azure tint. It goes a long way toward making the world these women inhabit feel alien and otherworldly, despite being paradisal and inviting. Cinorre, smartly, keeps the focus on the women at the center of the tale, not on the vast landscapes, gorgeous as they are. The set design (Ivan Veljača) and costuming (Ola Staszko) is also breathtaking and the playfulness with period detail against such a bizarre backdrop plays a large part in making the film as striking as it is. This is, simultaneously, in many ways, a full-throated war film. Fiery explosions blast through jungle canopy and beaches are torn to shreds by artillery shells. The characters fight off platoons in the dead of night with pistols and rifles, using Ana's preternatural skills as a crack-shot sniper to ward off the enemies that continually wash up in the frothy blue waves lapping at their shore.
It is an excellent, if uneven film, that, more than anything, feels like a breath of fresh air. In pieces, you've seen these elements in their respective genres. But, like Guillermo del Toro or Hideo Kojima or Claire Denis, Karen Cinorre's vision resists neat categorization and feels all the more exciting for it. I absolutely cannot wait to see her next vision. For now, this is a must-see.
