Magical Girl

Carlos Vermut’s deliriously imaginative film is divided into three chapters—world, death and flesh—that signal a work of heady depth and scope. While discovering the story’s intricacies is part of the pleasure, the basic story involves a young Japanophile named Alicia who is ill. She loves the anime character Magical Girl and dreams of owning a special dress worn by her and available at a hefty cost. Her father Luis is desperate to find a way to realize his child’s wish. Serving as the catalyst for his plan is a disturbed married woman named Barbara who has a mysterious past and some rather dark sexual predilections. Delightfully exploding genres and replete with allusions to de Sade and the Grand Guignol, Magical Girl is at once a heartbreaking tale of grief, a tense thriller and a deeply unsettling film noir. Watching the characters debase, deceive and double cross one another makes for an exhilarating viewing experience rich with surprise and visual sleight of hand. Though the only literal magic tricks in this ingenious work happen at the beginning and end of the film, there is a surfeit of directorial sorcery throughout. —Rod Armstrong