Who Were We When We Were Who We Were

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Like a Memento about identity itself, Luz is the sort of film you need to rework backwards through memory in order to unlock its secrets and quirks. In the straightforward sense it tells the story of a young woman named Luz (Luana Velis) who drives a taxi and who is, in the way of the movies, being hunted by a shape-shifting demon across a single night. It all starts with a meeting in a bar, a car accident, and a trip to the police station to make sense of it all...

That's just a starting off point though, and an ultra-simplified one at that -- tremendously promising first-time filmmaker Tilman Singer stretches forwards and backwards from that moment, acting and reenacting scenes bluntly in front of us with characters possessed and repossessed, the fabric of reality unspooling around them a little bit more each go. Sets become stages, actors play characters flatly acting out scenarios on repeat, their mouths stretching occasionally opening up unnaturally as if somebody's going to stuff fistfuls of dialogue down their throats. Eyes flash silver and smoke floats. Nightmares by Brecht.

The fact that the film is in German probably aided with the Fassbinder vibe I kept getting too (besides the obvious 70s hospital green and houseplant Cronenbergian parallels) but I think that's actually even moreso on the acting style, which presents itself as Acting, aliens getting used to their skins and mannerisms, unnerving every small moment in a spectacle of falseness. Is everything we're witnessing just a game the devil is having with us? Is this all a ruse, a trick, a way to maneuver inside of us and corrupt? Luz is relentless in its quest to unsettle these ways -- it might be a short movie (only running 70 minutes) but it digs out a ragged little mark of flesh, the sort of scar you won't forget soon. I felt corrupted.

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Luz is opening theatrically this Friday in New York (at the IFC Center, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema City Point, and the Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg) and in Los Angeles (Laemmle Monica, Laemmle Playhouse 7), with a national roll-out to follow. Keep your eyes peeled for this gem!

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