There’s an unsettling feeling in “After This Death” that would seem to be difficult to manufacture, getting under your skin all the more when writer/director Lucio Castro shows you how easily it’s done. Honing in on an introductory scene of a voiceover session where Isabel (Mia Maestro) is asked to use various levels of her Argentine accent in her line readings, the request and the work itself seems relatively benign until you catch a glimpse of its ultimate application, some doctor speaking with authority whose credibility is in part being supplied by someone else’s voice.
Ostensibly, Castro’s second feature is about Isabel, who he follows into upstate New York where it appears that giving voice to others has been rewarding work when she doesn’t seem to have much of one at home, with her husband Ted (Rupert Friend) always away on business even as she prepares to give birth to their first child. However, it takes on much more in a modern environment where reality generally feels elusive and people have the power to manipulate it towards their own ends without even recognizing their ability to do so. That idea is personified in Elliott (Lee Pace), who Isabel meets by chance out on a hike into the forest outside her home and soon learns from her friend Alice (Gwendolyn Christie) that he’s actually a singer of some renown after she invites her out to a random concert. The two turn out to be neighbors when he and his brother Ronnie (Phillip Ettinger) have a recording studio out in the woods and while he despises the attention from the cult-like following he’s built with their band, he is attracted to Isabel when she has little idea of who he is.
As Elliott clarifies, the fact that Isabel is pregnant is actually a turn-on to him and it’s not an issue for her, well aware of her husband’s own philandering and clearly appreciating being desired again, leading to some genuinely transgressive sexual encounters on screen. (A fragmentary musical score made up of eclectic organic sounds and muffled beats from Robert Lombardo and Yegang Yoo, who occupy other roles on the film respectively as a sound designer and costume designer, respectively, really sets the mood as far as a natural and artificial world is concerned.) The two create a bubble for themselves that’s eventually pierced when Ted comes home and the pregnancy doesn’t go as planned, sending both Isabel and Elliott spiraling for different reasons when the former contends with a deep personal sense of loss and the latter loses the only relationship that wasn’t predicated on the success of his music. Still, they have to continue living in the world that Elliott has created, rather than the two of them together, much to their dismay, as his fan base actively starts harassing Isabel with letters and disturbing messages left around her home (even including a singing telegram) all signed with the letters “TPYS.”
From the odd occurrences that pop up here and there throughout “After This Death,” the film would seem to occupy the warped reality that Elliott and Isabel experience every day from the start, but Castro gradually makes clear that to each their own and a way out only seems possible with the individual personal recognition of how much they’ve let others shape it. Surely not everyone will appreciate the surrealism here, dispensed more matter-of-factly than the David Lynch imitation you might expect, but the overall effect is quite eerie and it becomes the rare film about contemporary alienation that doesn’t invoke social media as a main cause and instead opts for a more intriguing exploration of characters who have just enough ability to curate their lives to be dissatisfied with the lack of control they ultimately have.
Although little of the fictional band’s music is played, Pace is quite convincing as an enigmatic lead singer who inspires such fierce devotion, bucking certain obvious cliches about jaded rock stars even as Elliott would have little competition for the belt, and Maestro’s performance proves key to holding the film together, keeping it grounded with her reactions to navigating the increasingly bizarre terrain that Castro has set out for Isabel. They may not be offered a break by the writer/director from living in strange times, but he cuts the audience one when free will may seem as if it’s at a premium, but the provocative drama generously offers a space to think for yourself.
“After This Death” will screen again at the Berlin Film Festival on February 21st at 9:30 a.m. at the Uber Eats Music Hall and 8:30 pm at the Colosseum 1, February 22nd at the Zoo Palast 1 and February 23rd at 3:15 pm at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.