'Magic Farm' and selling the sensational.

In Magic Farm, Amalia Ulman’s sophomore feature, the Americans are stupid. I don’t think that’s controversial to say. Jeff (Alex Wolff) has brought a documentary crew from New York to a rural Argentinian village because of a random Facebook message. That’s not the idiotic part, though double-checking something before you travel internationally would probably be a good idea, as pointed out by Elena (played by the director, Ulman). The crew get there expecting to meet ‘Super Carlitos’, an eccentric musician who wears a rabbit outfit, but it turns out they’re actually in the wrong country for that guy. Promised absurdity that isn’t there, the crew instead create something out of nothing: the idea that the people in this community wear pink bows on their heads and sing songs about the rapture. Despite the blatant exploitation, the Americans try to be well-meaning (mainly). Nonetheless, they are stupid because there’s a larger story here, right in front of their eyes, that they’re ignoring. They’ve ‘missed the forest for the trees’, so the old saying goes.

Throughout the spastic 90 minutes of comedic side tangents, failed romances and seeming Me-Too scandals, the locals try their very best to alert the crew to actual interesting stuff happening, but they don’t care. A robbery is mentioned multiple times, at one point explained in detail, and it rolls off them. Various protests are talked about, apparently over Argentina’s fascist government and abortion ban – that’s skimmed over. And everything happening with Matteo (Vaquer Ruiz de los Llanos) going to prison for a night would be enough material for a feature-length film. No, the characters in this indie satire refuse to engage with any substantive material and prefer to create their own brand of highwire sensationalism, the type you’ll likely see on YouTube.

The magic in Magic Farm lies within its ties to online shitpost culture. There's no other film in recent memory that devotes just as much time to children getting cancer from glyphosates as to looking at horse penis and dogs shitting on the ground. Similarly, no other film I've seen has purposely jumped from traditional docu-drama handheld two-shots to zany fisheye lenses and animals wading through the mud wearing GoPros. Of course, it's a very blunt literalisation of the message: anything involving the Americans requires at least the semblance of propriety, anything native to the land is a joke and a game, and this itself informs the idea that sensationalism sells - that the Americans aren't stupid by choice. It's by necessity.

This fact rubs Edna (Chloe Sevigny) the wrong way. One of the great disappointments in the film is that she is given very little to do and is cooped up in a hotel room off-screen for most of the movie. She and Dave (Simon Rex), the two major stars of the film, often feel like add-ons, and their relationship gets little to no screen time. The three leading players: Jeff, Elena and Justin (Joe Apollonio) are all pretty caricaturish in their roles, but all three performances are massive, specifically from Wolff, who plays the hyper-sensitive fuckboy perfectly, jumping from woman to woman during the movie without catching his breath. And he's the one through whom some of the most overt satire is pushed. In one scene, after being unable to speak to Popa (Valeria Lois), an Argentinian woman is helping them with her sewing, he randomly says 'Arigato' just for shits and giggles. In another, he looks at the hotel they'll be staying at, in the middle of Argentina, and says it has an 'Argentinian vibe' to it. He's the worst parts of American egotism, smushed into one man's body, and he plays it off like a pro.

What Ulman has done here is nothing short of masterful. Utilising brain rot and Facebook millennial meme humour, she’s crafted a satire that works as a comedy in its own right. She highlights that there’s a reason the sensationalist is being sold: it works. We’re eating it up, regardless. Can’t wait to see what she does next.