Strawberry Mansion (2022)

"Excellent, Quirky, Low Budget SF"

Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney's charming and highly creative tale of love in a world of dream taxation and intrusive advertising gets a cinema and digital release from Bulldog.

In 2035 your dreams are taxed, with each item you dream about being assigned a value, and a percentage of that being charged to you. Preble (co-writer and co-director Kentucker Audley) is a dream tax assessor charged with auditing Bella (Penny Fuller) who lives in a remote house in the country. All her dreams are recorded on VHS tape ("around 2000 of them") despite the format having been made illegal for the last seven years. As Preble starts to go through the tapes (and enter Bella's dreams) he starts to received strange messages that seem to suggest his love of fried chicken and fizzy drinks might not be entirely voluntary.

Very low budget and shot on what looks like 16mm, STRAWBERRY MANSION is nevertheless packed with creativity, ranging from imaginative model shots to stop motion animation to some excellent masks. The film's quirky style is reminiscent of the films of French director Michel Gondry while its subject matter will remind fans of classic SF literature of the works of Philip K Dick and also Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth.

The low budget actually adds to the film's appeal. If this had the budget of a Marvel movie it would lose a lot of its charm. It's still worth catching on the big screen, though, if you can - the images and ideas are big even if the budget isn't. In a market still saturated with super hero films, sequels and knock offs, STRAWBERRY MANSION is a tiny gem shining brightly that deserves all the love and support it can get. Here's the trailer:

STRAWBERRY MANSION is out in UK cinemas and on on-demand digital platforms on Friday 16th September 2022