Magic Farm: A Surreal Satire That Gets Lost in Translation

Amalia Ulman's Magic Farm arrives at Sundance four years after her debut "El Planeta," and this sophomore effort proves she's an artist with a singular vision – even if that vision is sometimes impenetrable. This is a film that feels like it was shot by a GoPro strapped to a dog, edited on mushrooms, and scored by someone having a bad trip. That's both a compliment and a warning.

When a Vice-style documentary crew (led by a pitch-perfect Chloë Sevigny) arrives in rural Argentina to profile a musician, they discover they're in the wrong town entirely. Instead of admitting their mistake, they decide to fake a music trend with the locals. What follows is a kaleidoscopic satire of American cultural imperialism, media exploitation, and the absurdity of viral content creation.

The film's aesthetic is aggressively unconventional – fish-eye lenses, knockoff GoPros, skateboard video vibes mixed with telenovela melodrama. Ulman shoots Argentina like it's Mars, finding alien beauty in mundane rural settings. When crop dusters spray toxic chemicals over everything, it feels both literal and metaphorical. This is colonialism as comedy, exploitation as farce.

Sevigny is perfectly cast as the exploitative host who preaches cultural understanding while mining otherness for clout. Simon Rex brings his usual grimy charm, while Alex Wolff delivers his most unhinged performance yet. But it's Camila del Campo as a local girl who steals every scene, bringing genuine emotion to this otherwise detached exercise.

The problem is that Magic Farm feels more like a series of provocative vignettes than a cohesive film. Ulman's critique of ugly Americans is spot-on but one-note, and at 93 minutes, it still drags. The episodic structure never coalesces into anything beyond "Americans bad, capitalism worse," which isn't exactly revolutionary insight in 2025.

Still, you have to admire Ulman's commitment to her bizarre vision. When she described this as "a rom-com shot as a skateboarding video," she wasn't lying. It's messy, frustrating, occasionally brilliant, and unlike anything else at Sundance.