Liza, the Fox Fairy, written and directed by Károly Ujj Mészáros, is an official selection of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival. The movie stars Mónika Balsai, Szabolcs Bede Fazekas, David Sakurai, Zoltán Schmied, and Piroska Molnár.
The Story:
For years, Liza (Balsai) was a live in nurse for a paralyzed woman who suddenly and mysteriously passes away.. In the woman's will, she leaves her flat to Liza who has been obsessed with a long dead Japanese pop star named Tomy Tani (Sakurai) who just happens to have been married to the paralyzed woman a long time before. What Liza thinks is Tomy's ghost she is seeing is actually an evil spirit who turns her into a fox-fairy cursed to kill any man who falls for her.
The Review:
If you think my synopsis is strange, wait until you see the movie...and I mean that in a good way. Károly Ujj Mészáros' film is a fun and quirky piece of film making that combines the breeziness of Amélie with the colorfully stylized worlds of Wes Anderson and then throw in some heavy Japanese fairy tale influence and you start to get an idea of what this movie is about. The cast is solid and they keep the comedy at a high level by playing everything straight faced like nothing absurd is going on, when in fact everything going on is quite absurd. The soundtrack is also spot on perfect as it easily dances back and forth between the catchy hooks of J-Pop songs a score that is almost Tarantino-esque in its edginess.
The Verdict:
The premise of Liza, the Fox Fairy is very odd and the delivery is even more so yet everything just seems to fit together nicely and the end result is a very entertaining movie that is hard to resist. My eyes were glued to the screen because I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next. Well, that and the subtitles, but that's beside the point. It's hard to resist a movie that is having this much fun telling its story.
CLICK HERE to see when you can watch Liza, the Fox Fairy.
CLICK HERE to see my picks from the 2015 SIFF lineup.
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