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From Other Worlds
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Spanish television is chock full of free-to-air options that offer an extreme level of specialisation: one channel for (seemingly) every sport, every variation of news format, every type of programming for kids. Movies are broken down by genre, sometimes very loosely indeed: besides the ubiquitous old Westerns (in faded, stretched-out prints), there are channels for action, romance, el cine friki … The trade-off for the ‘free’ part is an ad break every few minutes – in which only the channel itself is promoted by the same montage of clips, over and over, next to a clock that counts down from the two-minute mark. You get to wondering who, exactly, these (literally hundreds of) channels are for, and what commercial purpose they can possibly serve. Surfing these channels (descending from 5000 to 1!), I stumbled, on a Horror station, upon a low-budget American film (let’s please leave the dreaded ‘indie’ tag aside), From Other Worlds – which I had never heard of. The very first thing I saw was the impressive face of Isaach de Bankolé, speaking English on the streets of New York! But this is not a film by Claire Denis, or even Jim Jarmusch. As if to signal de Bankolé’s alienness in this USA context, no white character he encounters is aware that the Ivory Coast is part of Africa … (I learned later that the actor has, in fact, been resident in America since 1997. I had come to mainly associate him with European cinema!) It’s not, in the event, a horror movie (it was probably the not-great title alone that got it slated as such); it’s a cute, whimsical comedy in the ‘pretend SF’ mode of Save Yourselves! (2020) – a generally maligned, dismissed or overlooked comic mode. I missed Robert Downey, Sr’s cameo as a homeless guy at the start, but the plot retroactively explained itself to me in a swift, verbal recap. Ditzy Joanne (Cara Buono from Mad Men and Stranger Things) has received what appears to be a cryptic message from an ambassador of outer space; from that moment on, odd coincidences and seeming signs keep pointing her toward a mission she cannot exactly fathom. (The general ordinariness of the visionary process anticipates a thread in the TV series The OA [2016-2019] – and also looks back to Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1977].) She picks up an unexpected accomplice in this quest: taxi driver Abraham (de Bankolé). Eventually we will arrive (on a high rooftop) at a very fruity alien (Joel de la Fuente) whose wacky, ever-changing voice is a superb AI parody well before its time. That’s the camp side of the film (also stoked by the insertion of an effete art curator), joining a long queue of comic-aliens in everything from Earth Girls are Easy (1988), Mars Attacks! (1996), Meet the Applegates (1990) and Martians Go Home (1990) through to the insanely underrated How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017), not to mention mainstream successes such as TV’s 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001). In From Other Worlds, the odd fellow from the stars at last clarifies the task at hand for these ordinary but “open minded”, chosen humans: they have to swap (in a high-security Natural Museum) a recently discovered scroll – the only document to survive the historic destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria! – for its better, corrected version, before the former is unrolled, translated and spoken aloud. Because the errors in the original version, if broadcast, will bring about the immediate destruction of the entire universe, no less; whereas the re-draft will push forward the human race into its next stage of evolution. Even aliens make mistakes sometimes! Two extra elements in this plot mix: the club of daggy UFO crazies (led by Paul Lazar) who, in blind faith, take leave of their annual barbecue to spontaneously help Joanne and Abraham to (elliptically) bust in and out of the Museum (Mission: Impossible on a Z budget); and the ill-defined heavy who menacingly shadows these troupers every step of the way, in order to score big on the black market for ancient scrolls (?). Better news: the relationship-comedy part of the film is pure Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) – Joanne is a “dumb Brooklyn housewife” (in-film description, not mine), but her adventure into an ‘other world’ leads her away (for a while, at least) from stultifying home-husband-kids and into adventure, plus (a little, and slightly transgressive) romance. And, just as Susan Seidleman’s film (and Leora Barish’s script) found its inspiration in Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974), here our heroes follow a trail of signs in the streets, and consult a library (as well as a stern, snooty librarian nicely played by Melissa Leo) for historical knowledge. (When Joanne’s dull husband asks why she is suddenly reading thick books, she wisely replies: “I saw a documentary on TV!”) There’s also a touch of Jonathan Demme (and, fleetingly, Jean-Claude Biette) in this simple, plainly made but quite enjoyable fantasia. And no wonder I was making these casual cinephile associations: looking up writer-director Barry Strugatz, I discover he co-wrote (with Mark R. Burns) both Seidelman’s She-Devil (1989) and Demme’s Married to the Mob (1988), both of which I (against received opinion) liked and valued on their initial release. Strugatz’s most recent script is for Laurie Collyer’s Furlough (2018), in which Melissa Leo co-stars. I shall be keeping an eye out for him in future. © Adrian Martin 28 August 2025 |
