Final Rating: 3.5/5
What happens when you survive a traumatic unexpected event? Do you gather yourself together and overcome any new fears you might have to not let it define you? Or does it slowly consume every aspect of your life, waking and non? In the new Argentinian film Electrophilia, directed by Lucía Puenzo, we explore the after effects of a woman who is struck by lightning and scarred by it.
Amanda (or as her family calls her Ada), played by Mariana Di Girólamo, wakes up in a hospital bed confused as to where she is. She had just been in a coma for six weeks following a lightning strike. She works as a veterinarian for a dairy farm and when trying to help a pregnant cow give birth during a storm she and the cow are both struck.
After slowly remembering what had happened she notices her body is permanently marked with the trauma she survived. She now has a streak of white in her dark black hair like poliosis and Lichtenberg Figure scars running down her body showing how the strike took the path of least resistance to get through her. This reddish scar, that looks like branching, starts on her neck and travels down her chest and abdomen before stopping on one of her thighs. It’s an unwanted tattoo that will be a constant reminder.
While recovering in the hospital Amanda is visited by the mysterious Juan (Germán Palacios), who claims that he and his group can help her recover and that traditional medicine doesn’t understand how to treat lightning strike victims. He proves his point by giving her a magnet to place over her eye to help with eye floaters, which works for her.
Amanda can’t sleep, and when she does manage to pass out, she wakes up anxious and afraid. She has sensitivity to light and must keep the curtains closed at all times. They are also paranoid by all the electricity surging through her apartment so she unplugs everything. Storms draw her in but still has a healthy fear of the power they possess.
Amanda rejects the pills her drug pushing father Cohen (Osmar Núñez) prescribes her, giving us flashbacks to Amanda’s mother hiding pills by burying them in the earth. Her partner Jano (Guillermo Pfening) tries to be supportive, but ends up being a placeholder for Cohen keeping tabs on what doctor’s appointments she attends and skips and even tries slipping ground up meds into her food.
Amanda seeks out Juan and his group who we learn are all survivors of lightning strikes that went through the same process of trying to get control of their lives, while also trying to get proper medical support that their doctors seem unable or unwilling to provide. Despite electroshock therapy mostly being identified as an outdated way to deal with mental health issues, it seemingly works for lightning strike victims because when they were struck, their internal electrical clocks got short circuited and they need to be reset.
Amanda becomes more and more infatuated with this group as they try to create connections outside of a world that doesn’t understand them. Amanda and Juan become close, as she learns this group is Juan’s personal science project. He was struck for the first time as a child, and again as an adult. She becomes aroused by the power that electricity has and enjoys the pain it can cause to herself, something that Juan understands and relates to. This begins a secret affair between them as she distances herself further from Jano and her family.
The film is being compared to Crash, David Cronenberg’s masterpiece, where car crash survivors only feel alive when they recreate the life or death sensation they experienced, which also activates arousal. Electrophilia may have a salacious English language title, but the movie is mostly focused on one woman trying to make sense of herself. She hears the constant buzzing of currents that people learn to tune out due to the overwhelming noise pollution we deal with on a daily basis and she even hallucinates seeing purple volts coursing through her body and through the world.
A touching moment in the film comes when Amanda goes to visit the cow that was also struck by lightning and finds that it has been shunned by the herd. The other cows can tell that something is different about her, as the bovine also bears the same type of scarring that Amanda has. She understands her loneliness and not being understood by the group.
Mariana Di Girólamo gives a quietly powerful performance. One of defiance and pain intertwined together to cause inner turmoil. She is fully committed to being healed by Juan even if she remains suspicious of his methods and past. Add in the sound design of electricity, always pulsing in the background, which works as a constant reminder of the power that surrounds us in our daily lives, barely being contained.
The film loses steam when after watching Amanda’s husband Jano trail and dig into Juan’s past and practices we expect there to be a big confrontation either with Juan or Amanda and neither really occurs. The explosive romance that Juan and Amanda begin also fizzles out rather quickly, leaving you to wonder what that storyline was meant for. In the end despite foreshadowing suggesting that Jano and Cohen are up to no good, it turns out they likely did just have her best interests at heart.
The visuals are stunning, as we get several scenes of large lightning strikes or when we see Amanda’s hallucination of purple electricity surging out of her body and into the world around her. The movie ends with the feeling you get watching Unbreakable for the first time, wondering if you have witnessed the origin story of a new super hero, with imagery that will stick with viewers. Overall it’s a fascinating film that doesn’t quite nail the third act even if the ending is memorable.
Thank you to FilmSharks for the screener.
