Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: A BRIGHT FUTURE [Tribeca Film Festival 2025 - New York, NY]
The prospect of prescience in knowing what will happen is a matter of perspective. With "A Bright Future" [Viewpoints], a teenager Elisa is selected to be taken to The North where her sister has already been accepted as part of the revelation for current society. The film is set in a country (the film is from Uruguay) where only the most youthful, intelligent and probable people are trained and sent North (to populate, invent, grow, etc0. Elisa (Martina Passeggi) seems to be apprehensive from the beginning but the approach is based on scores and placement. The beginniing training seems a little abstract in terms of what it is trying to accomplish. Elisa then returns home to her mother, who just doesn't want to be left when both of her daughter are up North. The question, as always, becomes of money. It is interesting though what becomes a commodity. Elisa through a next door neighbor's chicanery and perhaps agenda sets a performance of smells which is not really fully explained. In this world, ants are considered evil and dogs are extinct so anything is possible through its ultimate reason is a little elusive.
The progression of how certain things came to be are basically left up to the viewer in many ways. But what Elisa comes to realize is that being perfect in some ways is not all it is cracked up to be. The neighbor, a redhead with a pixie cut, is an interesting cat. Her agenda at first seems romantic and is spurned but when it is reversed after a night of drinking, the repercussions and requisite feelings are not felt or taken to task. However then a real agenda is put forth but the reality of it doesn't quite match. The people who go North need to be smart and physically perfect in a way...and she is missing her leg. Elisa actually finds it unique but when push comes to shove a decision is made which is almost antetherical to certain ideas the movie is playing with. In this way, sans the violence, there is a Hunger Games prospecct to it. It reflects on a sense of duty but also the notion that it is alright to be imperfect. All will end up as it should be. "A Bright Future" is a dystopian tale of sorts. It is set in a future but in a retro way where it is as if society is working in reverse (which it might be). B
By Tim Wassberg
