Far-Out Field Studies

MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND (C) - A spectacle in the true sense of the word, this vanity project comes from Spanish actress Ana Asensio, making her writing and directing debut with the tale of a struggling immigrant lured into an exotic underground scene in Manhattan. Asencio, sculpted and statutesque with penetrating eyes, slums a bit in the starring role, playing screw-up Luciana -- morose and melancholy -- a perpetually broke bumbler who is equally inept baby-sitting adolescents or hawing restaurant fliers while wearing a chicken suit.

It's a stretch to convince us that Luciana is both incompetent and desperate enough to fall for a scam perpetrated by her model pal Olga (Natasha Romanova). Luciana finds herself in an underground lair, amid a bevy of beauties lined up to satisfy the kinky desires of a random group of elite fetishists. Is her life in danger or is merely her self-respect on the line? Asencio is not shy about displaying her body for all to see, but Luciana's emotional life remains quite cloaked.

This descends into absurdity by the end of its 80-minute run, and there is no clear point to the exercise. (Luciana is haunted by a tragedy back in her homeland, a trope that is stale and clunky here.) An extended scene of Luciana bungling the after-school pickup of misbehaving siblings has a delightful edge to it, and there are scattered moments of sharp storytelling and camera work (the opening scene tracks with a series of women strutting through Manhattan before alighting on Luciana), but the descent into cheap Cinemax titillation makes this feel lurid in the end.

TABU (2012) (B-minus) - Half of an interesting movie from Miguel Gomes ("Our Beloved Month of August," which we still haven't gotten to), a 40-something auteur from Portugal. The first half is a chore to get through. It revolves around Pilar (Teresa Madruga), who has been jilted by the Polish student she was expected to host, coping with her eccentric neighbor Aurora (Laura Soveral) and Aurora's exasperated housekeeper Santa (Isabel Cardoso). Aurora seems to be losing her marbles, and characters often talk past each other rather than to each other.

The first half ends with Aurora's demise, and she and -- later, after she dies -- an old friend, Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espirito Santo), reminisce about their shared past. It turns out that back in their youth, Aurora (Ana Moreira in flashback) was a farmer and hunter in Africa (in the shadow of the fictional Mount Tabu). Ventura narrates the tale of free-spirited Aurora's scandalous affair with musician Gian Luca.

Gomes shoots in grainy black and white, and he flashes an old-fashioned, elegant visual style (with a slight surrealist nod to Guy Maddin's fever dreams). He mixes American rock classics -- both original and remakes (including by the Ramones) and both in English and Portuguese -- to evoke an era as well as to mix and match cultures and continents. It's a gorgeous movie that could essentially do without its first hour.

BONUS TRACKS
The trailers. First, "Most Beautiful Island":



 "Tabu":



"Be My Baby," in Portuguese, by Les Surfs:
Tabu - Be My Baby from Alex Mystery on Vimeo.