While Lucia Puenzo’s Electrophilia contains many interesting ideas on the human body’s reactions to being struck by lightning, its paper-thin screenplay undermines most of the movie.
Director: Lucía Puenzo
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 90′
Fantasia Premiere: July 25, 2024
Release Date: TBA
The fun of attending the Fantasia International Film Festival always has to do with the idea that you see movies while solely relying on their plot synopsis, and you usually never know if it will be good or bad. It can often be excruciating, especially if you pick a streak of bad films that may look interesting on paper but are poorly executed.
However, it can also be wholly rewarding, as you suddenly discover gems that will likely become major classics once more eyeballs are on it (like Sander Maran’s Chainsaws Were Singing, which, in my opinion, is the best film of the festival so far). In the case of Electrophilia (Los Impactados), which is having its North American Premiere and competing for the Cheval Noir award at Fantasia, it’s a bit of both.
The film, which is directed by Lucía Puenzo and co-written by Puenzo and Lorena Ventimiglia, has so many incredible ideas and images that stick with you long after the credits have rolled. But it also has one of the weakest, most uninteresting screenplays of any Cheval Noir films to date. The end result is, unfortunately, a confounding experience that, while striking, leaves little to be desired once the credits roll.
The movie begins after its inciting incident has already occurred, with Ada (Ariana Di Girolamo) waking up from a six-week-long coma at the hospital. Her body is massively scarred, perhaps permanently. As she wakes up, she already feels something wrong: she’s developing sensitivity to light and electricity, and she doesn’t know exactly what happened. We then cut to exactly what happened: Ada was violently struck by lightning.
How Puenzo frames this specific scene is the film’s best – and most realistic – part. The camera never steps away from the car’s windshield, observing Ada in the middle of a thunderstorm. Of course, no one can predict when lightning will strike. The safest place to be during any thunderstorm is inside, not outside, and it’s even more frightening when Ada steps out of her car to tend to a cow, but is immediately caught in the cross-fire of the lightning and gets directly hit. Not at a distance, but directly on her.
The impact is immediate. My jaw was completely on the floor then: I didn’t know what would happen next. As Ada wakes up, is discharged from the hospital, and begins to relearn her sense of self, she starts researching lightning burns and injuries and realizes that her life will drastically change. Her body reacts differently and is doing things it’s not supposed to do.
Scared, and with no way out, Ada turns to a doctor, Juan (Germán Palacios), who treats people with the same condition as her. But his methods are wholly unorthodox and, more importantly, illegal (it’s implied that many of his ‘patients’ died under his watch). However, an innate feeling begins to awaken within Ada as she spends more time with Juan, as if the two are connected like electroshocks. She soon develops a kink over electroshocks and puts herself in dangerous situations to get aroused by the ‘buzz’ of getting shocked.
Of course, this is now comparable to films like David Cronenberg’s Crash, or Julia Ducournau’s Raw and Titane. To explore such a subject with such interest requires the ability to make Ada’s shift feel inexplicably compelling. How can a normal, down-to-earth girl like her become sexually attracted to a dangerous, life-threatening practice? After being struck by lightning, her entire perception of life changes. We then understand that her sexuality is no longer the same as it was before.
Oh, sure, she continues to have sex – only, not with her significant other (Guillermo Pfening), but with her newfound doctor. Because the two have gone through the same experience. This is extremely compelling material that should have been the premise of something truly special, a body horror movie that’s decidedly raw and isn’t afraid to showcase how the human body morphs and distorts itself to hazardous fantasies when it becomes imbalanced by the Wrath of God.
Beautifully photographed, Electrophilia deftly shows this transformation in the first act as the basis of what could have been the next big sexual body horror movie. Unfortunately, the development stops right in the first act, and never recovers from there. For instance, many plot threads are introduced and add layers to Juan’s agenda, such as the aforementioned patient deaths, but are immediately dropped as soon as Puenzo presents them. Now, this reshapes Ada’s perception of the doctor, but never in such a meaningful way that it impacts their relationship. So why bring something this huge up if you’re not going to do anything without it?
The same can be said for the core relationship, which gets cyclical quickly. The two are attracted to one another. The doctor is using her. She can’t see that. She eventually realizes this, but nothing else happens. They go on as if nothing has developed between the two, after Ada realizes what Juan is doing to her. It would be fine if nothing else had been introduced, but this is not the case. Crucial information is revealed as the film goes along. So crucial that it should change someone’s perception of the person they’re spending time with.
And yet, Puenzo treats it as if it’s no big deal, and we’re supposed to believe that her sexual desires are so powerful that she will immediately ignore the warning signs on Juan to spend more time with him. It makes zero sense, and the film quickly begins to fall apart, regardless of how commanding Di Girolamo is.
She definitely gives a towering, haunting portrayal of Ada as a person with a body in decay that will never recover from the permanent scars she has on her body; her character, unfortunately, begins to fall into the script’s shortcomings. As a result, the performance also falters under a screenplay that starts out incredibly strong but wears itself thin, as Puenzo has no idea exactly where to develop her story.
And yet, the material is there! A potent exploration of a body’s wrong turns into despair and decay as it slowly begins to sexualize the feeling of being electrocuted. That alone is great stuff for something that would blow away the Fantasia audience. But Puenzo chooses a dull relationship arc that goes virtually nowhere and ends anticlimactically with the biggest of all thuds. It’s a damn shame, because Electrophilia starts assuredly and grips us on edge with its evocative imagery and impeccable lead performance from Ariana Di Girolamo. Had Puenzo delved deeper into its core subject matter, it would likely have been my favorite of the festival. Unfortunately, it’s not the case.
Electrophilia premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 25-31, 2024.
