About halfway into “Forever Your Maternal Animal,” a striking confession appears almost out of nowhere. The two main characters in the film, sisters in their early twenties, are sitting in a mall restaurant when the younger one says she has sex with the spirits who visit her room at night. She’s so detailed in her description as to make her claim utterly believable. Up until that point, the film has been a drama about a family in quiet crisis — so when the older sister reacts in stunned confusion, she mirrors the audience, who may start rethinking what kind of film they are watching.
In that ambiguous area between reality, tall tales and fantasy lies the temperament of this sophomore effort from Costa Rican-French filmmaker Valentina Maurel — whose Locarno-awarded 2022 debut “I Have Electric Dreams” was Costa Rica’s official submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. Additionally, the scene encapsulates the dynamic between the two sisters. The older Elsa (Daniela Marín) is a pragmatist who keeps her cards close to her chest, never revealing much about what she’s thinking. She’s on a break from her life in Belgium, visiting her family in San José. Or so she claims, as the visit seems to have no end in sight.
On the other hand, there’s Amalia (Mariangel Montero), who is in a constant hypothetical confessional about her love life, her fears, and what she thinks about everyone and everything around her. Their mother Isabel (Marina De Tavira, an Oscar nominee for Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma”) is consumed with the reissue of a book of poetry she wrote in her twenties. She has no time to manage Amalia, who’s refusing to go to college, or to find out why Elsa mysteriously left her boyfriend back in Belgium.
These three characters crash against each other and others in their orbit. Whether in conflict, in jest, in love, in silliness or in sex, they don’t just occupy the same space, but constantly try to usurp each other. Elsa argues with her mother, Isabel doesn’t like to be questioned and pretends everything’s all right, while Amalia hangs with dodgy characters and makes claims that seem real only to her.
While “Forever Your Maternal Animal” does not have a plot per se, Maurel has written three compelling and distinctive characters. The screenplay is episodic, with scenes that do not naturally follow each other to form a coherent narrative, but rather come together to give the audience a full portrait of these three women. There are many hangout scenes: Elsa and Amalia visiting an old nanny of theirs who now has dementia; Amalia’s dog trainer boyfriend and his questionable friends cooking for the sisters; Isabel confessing something personal to a taxi driver. Each of these encounters reveals more about the characters, showing how they think and what they desire.
Elsa might be considered a stand-in for Maurel, who also studied in Belgium. But while Elsa is quite withholding, Maurel is an intimate filmmaker who likes to stay close to her actors to show their innermost thoughts. Nicolás Andrés’ camera is always in closeup or tight medium shot, moving from one actor to the other. The constant movement might make some audience members dizzy, yet its jitteriness signifies the anxiety and unease of the characters, both in their skin and with each other.
Marin anchors the film with an unexpected performance full of hard edges and soft feelings. Elsa is angry at her family but also clearly loves them deeply, and Marin plays both registers with icy cool and burning pain. Montero has an easy presence on screen that complements Marin’s more anxious disposition, while as the loquacious Isabel, De Tavira gives ““Forever Your Maternal Animal” both its funniest and most heartbreaking moments.
“Forever Your Maternal Animal” — which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes, jointly winning Best Actress for its three leads — never quite builds toward a grand revelation or catharsis. Maurel is less interested in narrative payoff than in emotional texture. As the film drifts through awkward conversations, small tensions and intimate moments that reveal character more than they tell a story, the film occasionally threatens to dissolve under the weight of its own shapelessness. But the performances, and Maurel’s observational eye, keep it compelling even in its messier stretches.
