SXSW Film Review: Most Beautiful Island

Poverty and immigration power this taut thriller

BY RICHARD WHITTAKER, 2:15PM, TUE. MAR. 14, 2017

There’s a key image that unlocks the central metaphor of Most Beautiful Island: cockroaches, fallen into a tub of water, scrabbling to survive. But are they treading water, treading each other down, or creating a raft for mutual survival?

In her directorial debut, seasoned Spanish TV actress Ana Asensio heads to a grimy New York of undocumented workers and lousy cash-in-hand jobs. In the lead role of Luciana, she’s on the run from her old life, washed up in the Big Apple, and living gig to gig. There’s a measured bitterness and a self-destructive streak that seems destined to take her down risky paths.

Asensio’s opening act is one of measured subtlety. Rather than have her characters engage in long, declaratory exposition about life without documentation, she paints their stresses in smaller brushstrokes, like having them pass over a Craigslist job ad because it requires a social security number. There’s almost a dash of mid-Nineties Ken Loach, or more recent Joe Swanberg (also a fan of Super 16, on which this was shot) in the lo-fi depiction of daily grind, of owing the bodega for ice cream or taking crappy jobs to make ends meet.

But this is not Swanberg’s Chicago: this is Larry Fessenden’s New York. As one of two titles under the genre-bending auteur’s Glass Eye Pix shingle (along with Like Me) at SXSW this year, there’s more seething under the skin than dealing with ungrateful kids on a babysitting gig. Her friend/fellow migrant Olga (Natasha Romanova) tells her of a deal that sounds too good to be true: a few hours at a party, no stress with a big payday. Of course, if it sounds too good, it is too good, and there’s something more sinister at the end of the cab ride than bad DJs and watered-down martinis.

Asensio sets herself an almost impossible challenge: a slow, tense second act that is just the mounting tension of a waiting room. How can the third act possibly pay off that invested time? Well, it does. Moreover, she creates a final resolution that avoids any of the trite defaults of a thriller.

Most Beautiful Island is a character study of survival in a capitalistic, hierarchical world that is not completely bereft of humanity. Arsenio gives Luciana a true inner life, and even the antagonists make deep emotional sense. And then she puts everyone through a ringer that matches the most devious and nail-biting stories of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, an intriguing and slow-burn reinvention of survival horror.

Jack Fessenden’s
Feature debut
STRAY BULLETS
now available on DVD
for your home collection.

“An enjoyably blood-soaked thriller with unexpectedly lyrical interludes — made very much in the shadow of classic genre forebears and on what was clearly a constrained budget — this is a strikingly impressive calling-card.” —Hollywood Reporter

Disc includes the hour-long “making of” featurette entitled SWEATING BULLETS.

Stop by your favorite brick and mortar video store or order on-line today!

Starring Asa Spurlock,
Jack Fessenden, James Le Gros,
John Speredakos, Larry Fessenden,
and Kevin Corrigan

and why not pick up the STRAY BULLETS Score from iTunes as well!

FROM Bloody-Disgusting:

Rob Mockler makes his directorial debut with Like Me, and oh boy do you have to see this trailer! The footage shows star Addison Timlin in her own trippy world that gives nods to cult classics such as David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation, not to mention Max Headroom. The film looks like a tripped out version of V/H/S, inspired by Patrick Nagel’s art, and soaked in cool 80’s florescent lighting. I need this in my life ASAP!

From the world of alternative facts comes this official stat from The Guinness Book of World Records: “Longest script for a graphic adventure game: Screenwriters Graham Reznick and Larry Fessenden (both USA) wrote 1000 pages of dialogue for Until Dawn (2015), reduced from an initial 10,000-page outline. The script’s epic length was in part owing to the game’s extended development period. It was originally announced as an action title back in 2012.”

Well, sort of true… anyway, was a lot of work, was a fantastic experience and we are honored to be sited!

LIKE ME premieres at SXSW Monday, March 13th at the Stateside Theater!

From Screen Anarchy:

The internet can be a weird and dark place, which is something I think anybody who has spent any amount of time online can agree on. How much online culture will grow to shape society versus how much society shapes online culture is still something to be seen played out around us but as we see a generation now reaching maturity having spent their entire lives inundated in broadband video and social media it’s clear enough that it’s doing something to us. And what that thing may be is very much the subject of Robert Mockler’s striking debut feature Like Me.

Read full article…

First-time writer-director Ana Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island is a movie you won’t easily forget. The psychological thriller follows a day in the life of an undocumented immigrant woman trying to make ends meet in New York. She decides to take an odd job to get herself out of financial straits, but when she shows up, she’s forced into a dangerous underground world in which her life hangs by a delicate thread. Shot in gritty Super-16, the film intimately captures the desperation and ignominy facing many American immigrants. – Emily Buder

Read full article…

Trailer and poster now available.

From Rue-Morgue:

 Exec producer Larry Fessenden’s DIG TWO GRAVES unearths supernatural thrills this month

New York horror mogul Larry Fessenden was among the executive producers of DIG TWO GRAVES, a supernatural film starring THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ Ted Levine. It’s coming later this month; keep reading for the info, trailer and poster.

 Area 23a Movievents releases DIG TWO GRAVES to select theaters and VOD March 24. Directed by Hunter Adams from a script he wrote with Jeremy Phillips, the film also stars Samantha Isler, Troy Ruplash, Danny Goldring and Ann Sonneville. The synopsis: After 13-year-old Jacqueline Mather [Isler] loses her brother in a mysterious drowning accident, she is soon visited by three moonshiners who offer to bring her brother back to life—but at a grim cost. As the dark history of her grandfather, Sheriff Waterhouse [Levine] is unearthed, the true intentions of the moonshiners come to light.”

From Entertainment Weekly: 

Glass Eye Pix and Hood River Entertainment are teaming up to produce horror-thriller The Ranger. The film follows a group of teen punks who get in trouble with the cops and escape to the woods. There, they come up against an unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind, hell-bent on preserving the serenity of his forest.

The Ranger will be the directorial debut of Jenn Wexler, who cowrote the script with Giaco Furino. Wexler is best known as a producer whose credits include director Robert Mockler’s Like Me and Ana Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island, both of which are screening at this year’s SXSW Film Festival. Wexler also produced director Mickey Keating’s Must List-approved 2016 haunted house tale Darling and the same filmmaker’s Psychopaths, which will receive its world premiere at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. Andrew van den Houten and Ashleigh Snead will produce for Hood River Entertainment and Larry Fessenden and Heather Buckley will produce for Glass Eye Pix, along with Wexler. The title was showcased at the 2016 Frontieres International Co-Production Market at the Fantasia Film Festival. It was at the market that the two companies decided to join forces and produce the film.

“I have a long history with Andrew, ever since he cast me in his feature debut Headspace, and later in Jug Face, but this will be our first time partnering as producers,” said Fessenden in a statement. “It is a thrill to team up to support Jenn Wexler’s first outing as a feature director after her many outings producing for others.”

“I’ve been a fan of Jenn’s work since I selected her short film to be the winner at Viscera Film Festival years ago,” van den Houten. “Now I’m honored to be helping finance and produce her first feature. Larry, GEP, and I have been waiting to collaborate for years so may this be a fruitful start with many more projects to come.”

The Playlist has the scoop

As immigration continues to dominate the national conversation, things couldn’t be more timely for Ana Asensio‘s “Most Beautiful Island,” which is getting ready to premiere at this month’s SXSW Film Festival.

In addition to directing, Asensio wrote and leads the film, which also stars Natasha Romanova, David Little, Nicholas Tucci, Larry Fessenden, and Caprice Benedetti, and tells the story of a single day in the life of a young, undocumented immigrant in New York City. 

“Most Beautiful Island” launches this weekend. Poster created by Mondo artist Jay Shaw.