At different, very random times in my life, I’ve been asked a simple, hypothetical question: If you could have a superpower, what superpower would you have? I’ve heard every answer you can think of. Super speed? You can get anywhere without paying for gas. Super strength? Bet and win every arm wrestling match at the bar. Mind reading? Find out if that person you have a crush on likes you too. But the one I rarely hear as someone’s answer: Mind control. I’ve never thought much of it, but I think I know now. LFO has shown me why.
Antonio Tublén’s second feature film, LFO, is a dark, moody, and sometimes hilarious sci-fi drama that examines the boundaries of the human condition. A meditative descent into one man’s twisted head, it has a scope so ambitious and large that you might forget the film takes place entirely in one house. It also looks pretty too.
Robert Nord (portrayed by the excellent Patrik Karlson) is a loser stuck in an unhappy marriage and a mediocre life. He’s an avid audiophile, and has been exploring uncharted territory in sound waves with some pals over the internet. Eventually, Robert finds a way to use sound to lull unsuspecting people into a hypnosis, and he quickly takes advantage to make the people around him — in particular his new neighbors, Linn (Izabella Jo Tschig) and Simon (Per Löfberg)– his puppets.
The film wastes zero time in doing exactly what you expect. Instead of prolonging the inevitable and being a predictable comedy of errors, Tublen goes into overdrive and exhausts every simple expectation within the first act. What is left is an unpredictable, sometimes funny, consistently haunting tale of a sick, disturbed man who has twisted society’s morals to play in his favor.
Robert is a true son of a bitch. It goes beyond hypnotizing people into having sex or cleaning your house. His hots for Linn was expected from the get-go, but the way Robert infects the lives of his neighbors like a disease drives the film forward. It’s not just Linn he gets involved with and waves his hand to make her husband Simon go away, Simon is in along for the ride! His obnoxious intrusion into the intimate lives of his neighbors, twisting them to fit his own image of a perfect sitcom family or becoming their goddamn therapist, is supremely discomforting. The film proposes the thesis that every man’s moral compass shapes their worldview, but that their worldview directs their compass. Morality is ultimately subjective. Right and wrong can mean different things to different people. And for Robert, he can provide a convincing argument for a bunch of the awful shit he does, no matter how much you disagree with him. I vehemently hated every action Robert took, but somehow this almost supervillain manages to get what he wants. Which, when you can easily manipulate people like they’re your living Sims, isn’t very hard.
The scope of the film is large and ambitious, thematically and actually quite literally, despite the incredibly limited physical space. Robert’s house is the Garden of Eden, and Simon and Linn are Adam and Eve. It’s not a subtle metaphor, but eventually the experiments of Robert spread to the entire world, and without giving too much away, it’s all pretty terrible.
I can’t give away too much about Clara, Robert’s wife, who is played by the totally awesome Ahnna Rasch. She’s suffocating in her marriage to Robert, and she exerts a tired energy that makes you feel for her. But her presence is soon revealed to be something else, and thankfully it’s revealed relatively early-on so there’s no bullshit “twist endings” here, for the simple fact it’s not part of the ending. Although it does have a closing scene at the end, and that one nearly broke me.
LFO, under a different direction, could have been a supervillain origin story. Under Tublén — whose other work I admit I’m unfamiliar with — it remains a quiet, realistic sci-fi soap opera about loneliness, desire, and the ambitions of a mad genius. Robert treats his work like an artist. He morphs science into something abstract, something that can be created and understood interpretively. He’s also arrogant and pretentious. He mocks up his Nobel Prize speech in his basement. He believes he can change the world — and he can! It’s incredible what he’s invented — but he immediately withholds his power to himself for obvious reasons. Better in his hands than someone else’s, he reasons. I truly believe Robert is just inches away from being a supervillain from a (good) ’90s comic book.
Technically, the cinematography is top-notch. I’ve seen hundreds of modern, low-budget films take a vertie approach and I’ve been exhausted of that style for a long time. LFO is a wonderful breath of fresh air. Expert picture composition and steady shots (with maybe a few harsh pans here and there) make for a clean, crisp aesthetic that is ultimately pleasing to look at. No one in the film is Hollywood beautiful — they look like real people — but the film is nice to the eye. Although a moody film, it’s bright and appropriately lit at the right times.
A word about the framing. Many times the LFO breaks conventional coverage rules only slightly for a unique frame. Heads are cut off, eyes are looking up at nothing but space, and views are obscured. It’s not off-putting in the slightest either. In key scenes this framing happens, and though it’s a novelty that I might get tired of if abused, for now it makes LFO totally unique.
A movie where the entire premise is built on sound would be remiss to trip over its soundtrack. The film’s audio skeleton sounds like it came from Trent Reznor scoring Screech’s room in Saved By The Bell. It’s neither techno or EDM, side-stepping predictability and going instead for novelty. That novelty is the form of atmospheric bleep bloops from the Atari age, and it’s a treat but ultimately empty. Collecting film soundtracks is a fun side hobby of mine, and I don’t think LFO has what it takes to warrant a listen when I drive or write. Part of the fun of remembering a movie is in its soundtrack, to relive the film on a more sublime level. LFO‘s soundtrack, whether it’s released or not, isn’t making me care enough to even look up if it’s available. It fits the movie perfectly, but I don’t care for it separately.
I think I know now why mind control isn’t a totally favored superpower. Granted, I’m sure there are thousands of people who would answer “mind control” to the question of what superpower would you be armed with. But there are thousands more who wouldn’t, and I suspect the burdens that come with it are far heavier than benching a truck. It’s an ugly responsibility to play God, one that humans have no right to and are too stupid to handle. LFO is a fun, dark demonstration as to why the superpower remains quietly unspoken.
The DVD
About as bare-bones as can be. Aside from the trailer, it comes with a medium-sized behind-the-scenes featurette with interviews from Tublén, the actors, and producers. It’s a light, ordinary mini-documentary you’d come to expect that provides some insight into the film’s themes and characters. However, it gets points from me for showing a nice look at the film’s premiere at the 2013 Fantastic Fest, the Austin film festival I’ve been dying to go to. Other than that, there isn’t much of anything. The audio set-up has only a subtitle feature, and the only language available is English. There are no dub tracks, only the original audio, which I’m perfectly okay with. The picture remains gorgeous, which surprised me. I have altogether stopped buying DVDs, but there were times watching this when I couldn’t tell if this was a Blu-ray or DVD (I admit it helped that I watched from a reasonably far distance, allowing me to miss any image imperfections as a result of the older format). Someone with better expertise, please let me know if it was a result of the use of Blackmagic Cinema Cameras during production.
LFO gets 4/5 stars. It’s a gripping exploration of one mad man’s abuse of power and exploitation of human weaknesses that shouldn’t be missed. The DVD gets a 2/5 stars, it has a nice behind-the-scenes featurette and nothing else.
LFO is available now on video on demand and DVD.