1950's America. Since his mother's confinement to an institution, Andy has lived in the shadows of his histoic father. A family acquantance, Dr. Wallace Fiennes, employs the introverted young man as a photographer to document as asylum tour advocating for his increasingly controversial lobotomy procedure. As the tour progresses and Andy witnesses the doctor's career and life unravel, he begins to identify with the institution's patients. Arriving at a California mountain town, a growing center of the New Age movement, the encounter as unconventional French healer who requests a lobotomy for his own daughter, Susan. A surreal and uncompromising reckoning with the dangers of passivity, representation and utopian thought from the director of ENTRETAINMENT and THE COMEDY.
“The whole film is gorgeous to look at, at any rate, with Jacqueline Abrahams’ production design poised between realistic sets littered with amusing vintage objects and unnaturally spare hospital wards. A dreamy feeling emanates from DP Lorenzo Hagerman’s muted browns and greens and soft focus. All the clues are there that Alverson and his co-screenwriters Colm O’Leary and Dustin Guy Defa are after bigger game than spoofing 1950s America.”
– Deborah Young : Hollywood Reporter
“Rick Alverson’s beautiful, often inscrutable new film takes a stand for eccentricity in a complacent suburban nightmare.”
– Guy Lodge: Variety
“Alverson leave very little room for serenity, bare compassion and affection gestures whose intensity and nakedness remind us of the great masters of trascendental cinema: Robert Bresson or Carl Dreyer. Fleeting halo lights amidst the heart of tragedy: the most devastating movie this critic has seen in a very long time.”
– Manu Yañez : Fotogramas
“A proposal as magnetic as it is immersive and captivating (…) this laberynth is just perfect.”
– Luis Martínez : El Mundo
