James Preble (director Kentucker Audley) has recurring dreams about Cap’n Kelly, a KFC-alike mega-brand. The next thing he knows, very much awake and out and about, he finds himself at a Cap’n Kelly, persuaded to purchase one of their new chicken shakes – a disgusting sounding liquid concoction of blended chicken meat and whipped gravy. We later discover that his chicken dreams have been implanted – subliminal advertising, and then some. This is Strawberry Mansion in a nutshell – an absurdist odyssey set mostly in people’s dreams, with an underlying commentary on corporate malpractice. It’s peculiar, beguiling stuff.
Nothing normal happens in this film. It’s 2035, although Preble, somewhat repressed and never without a fedora, seems like he’s from the 1940s. His lonely existence could do with some magic and well, he gets it, assigned to investigate a lifetime of untaxed dreams for the elderly Bella Isadora (Penny Fuller). Stepping inside her subconscious, by way of a huge papier-mâché helmet and a mountain of video tapes, he meets her younger self (Grace Glowicki), and, amidst a plot involving those dark corporate forces, a romantic relationship soon blossoms.
This is an unapologetically romantic film, pure-hearted and full of love.
From there, as the boundaries between dreams and reality blur, we meet a talking fly, mouse sailors, a saxophonist-playing frog waiter… etc. Surrealism is in its bones, in every frame. The budget is as cheap as chips, with an aesthetic that heartily leans into that, as if it’s all held together with bits of string and Sellotape, which in some cases it may well be – effects-wise, it’s more Méliės than Marvel. Sometimes this works in its favour; sometimes not. Much of it feels like it was made in a bedroom, and at worst has the whiff of school plays about it. Clearly in thrall to Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and David Lynch, it doesn’t reach those heights, because of its financial limitations, but also because it is so self-consciously kooky.
However. This is an unapologetically romantic film, pure-hearted and full of love, and its sideways exploration of the human heart lingers. It is gentle, sweet, inventive and ambitious, in every moment busting out of its budget. And that’s charming in itself.