Strawberry Mansion (2021)

Information

Siskoid
In the future of Strawberry Mansion, your dreams are taxed, so dry to dream small. Tax auditor James Preble does just that, but his worldview is expanded when he has to audit an elderly lady with no tax record. Oh, she's got all those dreams on tape, and he'll have to go through them all. What he finds is truth, and love (certainly one of the most unusual romances I've ever seen). This is a movie that understands dream logic better than most, and its dream imagery feels legit, but it's a surrealism that's amusing rather than pretentious. The animal heads are especially fun, and there's a lot of traditional effects work, including stop-motion. There are a lot of fun visuals, and not just in the dream world. The set dressing in the lady's house alone will have your eye jumping around from one element to another. There is a lingering mystery here - dreams and reality intermingle through no known device - but I'm so charmed that I spin theories out of whole cloth that easily satisfy me. A visual delight, a thin but biting satire, an original romance... Anything can happen in dreams. And what are movies..? 5 months ago