Strawberry Mansion – Film Review

In a dystopian future where dreams are taxed and invaded by advertisers, government agent James Preble (Kentucker Audley) travels to the home of Arabella Isadora, an eccentric aging artist, to audit her dreams. As he explores her subconscious, stored on a vast library of VHS tapes, he finds himself falling in love.

Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley’s Strawberry Mansion is without question one of the strangest movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a surrealist science fiction adventure romantic comedy film that is basically a continuous string of extremely strange moments and scenes that may not make a lot of sense. Seriously, the directors of this movie need to collaborate with Ari Aster. Sadly, though, the film as a whole oftentimes bored me mainly because the story was almost non-existent and there’s almost always a gigantic disconnect from all the characters.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand why the screenwriters chose to make the lead character of James Preble a huge mystery. We are supposed to feel just as weirded out as he is throughout the movie, but there should have been some depth given to him, but instead, we don’t get any sort of exploration of his character whatsoever. The same can be said about literally everyone involved in the story. Reed Birney is a terrific actor who is reduced to a smaller role here than what you might expect, and even he gets little exploration to his character.

Penny Fuller is a vibrant and exciting actress who definitely gives her all in the role of Arabella Isadora. This is the character that should have been the most fascinating because she is extremely crucial to the plot in ways that I won’t discuss due to spoiler concerns, but just like everyone else, she felt underused and underdeveloped as a character. The story in Strawberry Mansion is also one that will leave you scratching your head and not in a good way. A great surrealist story should definitely challenge your brain but you should also have some sort of understanding along the way.

Christopher Nolan‘s Tenet is a film that is incredibly strange and difficult to piece together, but at least that film gives you little clues along the way to help you out. So does his 2010 film Inception. Of course, Strawberry Mansion is nowhere near the levels of weird Tenet and Inception reaches, but this easily could have been one of the most dazzling cinematic experiences of 2022 but instead, it ended up being a colossal disappointment. If nothing else though, at least the cinematography here by Tyler Davis is masterful. Seriously, every shot in the film is gorgeous. Everything else? Not so much.