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A real-life mother–daughter duo play a semi-fictional mother–daughter duo struggling to make ends meet in this charismatic feminist class comedy.
Following her father’s unexpected death, fashion student Leonor returns to her seaside home to help out her mother, María. Despite having no job and no money, the insouciant María continues her spendthrift ways – expensing her shopping sprees to a possibly non-existent boyfriend and joking about the free board and food of jail should she get caught, all while battling eviction. In her own take on the grift, Leonor sells off her possessions and earns nothing but ‘exposure’ in the gig economy.
El Planeta is the wittily droll feature debut of New York–based Argentinian artist Amalia Ulman, best known for her 2014 Instagram performance-art project Excellences & Perfections, which documented the evolution of a fabricated persona. Here, she once again blurs fantasy and reality, starring opposite her actual mother, Ale Ulman, in a semi-autobiographical story of economic hardship that is also inspired by an infamous real-world mother–daughter pair of con artists. Charmingly loose and informal, this film paints a playful and disarming picture of life on the edges.
“A captivating throwback to the shaggy aesthetic of micro-budget 90s New York indies that plays like Grey Gardens with a hint of early Almodóvar.” – Hollywood Reporter