Tragic Jungle (2020, Yulene Olaizola) (Patreon)

32/100

Entirely possible that my ignorance of Mayan legend—specifically, that of the Xtabay, a word that I'd previously encountered only on the cover of an Yva Sumac album and hence had mistakenly assumed to be some volcanic region of Peru—got in the way of appreciating what Olaizola is up to here. Absent that knowledge, the film struck me as borderline misogynistic, albeit in the women-are-incomprehensible-succubi sort of way; retroactively learning that the character in question, who starts out as an apparently ordinary victim of patriarchal abuse, mysteriously turns into a literal, regionally specific succubus doesn't ease that discomfort as much as I might have hoped, to be honest. (Now I just have an issue with the folklore itself.) Audition is a masterpiece in large part because it's unclear whether anything that happens is real or just the protagonist's fearful projection—you can easily interpret the film as taking place almost entirely in Aoyama's head, even though he explicitly gets jolted out of a fantasy at one point. Here, Agnes is the closest we ever get to an identification figure, so the incoherent (at least to my eyes) gradual metamorphosis that takes place creates a vacuum that none of the generic oh let's call them gum runners even comes close to filling. Perhaps this jungle would seem more tragic, less banal, were I to watch the film again aware from the jump that there's a supernatural element at play...but that didn't help when I revisited Undine, so I kinda doubt that it'd make much difference here, either (especially given that friends who've seen it were likewise unimpressed). Apart from lush location photography and one memorably unexpected shot of Agnes walking away on giant bird feet, everything that got my attention did so by "virtue" of being risible. I alternately yawned and scoffed.