Traveling in a foreign land can be disorienting. Established routines lose their meaning. Unfamiliar sights, sounds, smells may trigger old memories or brand-new desires. Premiering in the Orizzonti sidebar of the 82nd Venice Film Festival, Catalan filmmaker Jaume Claret Muxart’s feature debut Strange River takes you on a road trip with a Spanish family through southern Germany. What starts off a breezy, truthful slice of life gradually loses touch with reality and drifts into a dreamier realm. Occasionally recalling Angela Schanelec’s lyrical minimalism or Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s queer-coded surrealism, Muxart’s deceptively simple film may require multiple viewings to uncover what’s hidden beneath its gorgeous, nonchalant surface.
There isn’t much in the way of plot. We join 16-year-old Didac (Jan Monter), his parents, and two younger brothers as they bike along the Danube in Germany. They bicker, take swims, set up camp, travel further. At night, Didac goes through lines from a play with his mother, wrestles with his brothers, or stares into space, stuck in his own world. What little we learn about this family is revealed in throwaway conversations; for example, that both parents know Didac is gay and aching over a village boy who’s been sending mixed signals. Or that mom had travelled the same bike route when she was young and met her first love on that very trip. Such character information is never actively woven into notable plot points but left lingering in the ether of an increasingly sparse narrative as the journey proceeds. One thing that does happen is the arrival of another teenage boy who we first see swimming next to Didac in the river, ethereal and fully naked like a merman. His phantom-like presence would continue to pop up wherever Didac goes, kindling a wordless romance that may or may not be all in the protagonist’s head.
Those who rely on full arcs and clear resolutions will struggle with Strange River. Muxart not only cuts back on anything that would lend his script more structure and substance; he purposefully pieces the film in a way to defy basic coherence. Just as you think a scene is starting to take shape, it abruptly cuts to something else entirely. A day’s journey may be reduced to a one-minute sequence sandwiched between prolonged close-ups of sun-tanned bodies or wistful eyes. Cause and effect are thrown out of the window; pretty soon one realizes you’re not even sure how long the characters have been on the road and where they are anymore. The intuitive (if not downright cryptic) editing creates a sense of mundane repetition that would doubtless frustrate many viewers. Yet those who succumb to the film’s trance-like rhythm may come to relish the rush of leaving reason behind and entering the unknown.
Strange River‘s second half, in particular, contains many deliciously trippy moments that can’t be explained away. We see Didac roaming what appears to be a gay cruising ground where young men exchange horny, meaningful glances. At the end of his stroll he sees a woman locked in a passionate kiss with one such young man, calls out “mother” to the darkened figure, then runs off in a hurry. We don’t know how Didac found his way to this place or whether the woman he sees really is his mother, and––if so––who she is kissing and why. In the next scene the family has moved on without ever addressing the incident. Are we to think it was all just a dream? Or did this trip down the strange river somehow give a mother of three the chance to step into her past and fix some regrets? Towards film’s end, the incongruity between what’s plausible and what transpires grows ever larger. There would be stretches of time where a character finds themselves stranded and alone or, in the case of Didac, joined by the mysterious, unspeaking boy. Knowing that what you see can’t be actually happening allows one to luxuriate in the gentle, infinite in-between, and for a while it’d seem that everything will be okay.
Beautifully photographed by Pablo Paloma and evocatively scored by Nika Son, Strange River has the warm, fuzzy texture of something remembered. For its earthy color scheme, natural lighting, and a prominent visual focus on the human body, it also feels, in a most complimentary sense, impossible to date. Muxart may have yet to prove his strength in narrative storytelling, but this enigmatic, all-around-beguiling debut has certainly introduced us to a filmmaker who understands and has the vocabulary to describe mysteries of the human experience.
Strange River premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival.
The post Venice Review: Strange River Announces Jaume Claret Muxart as a Major Talent first appeared on The Film Stage.
