ROMA ELASTICA

No one does it like our boy Mandico. His post-apocalyptic fever dream AFTER HOURS stole hearts in 2022; his queer fantasy epic SHE IS CONANN tore ‘em apart in 2023; his daring split-screen dance picture DRAGON DILATATION caused many an aggressive chin stroke. With ROMA ELASTICA, he sets his gaze toward the lineage of Italian cinema with this retro-kitsch blast… in English, no less!

Marion Cotillard, herself no stranger to Fantastic Fest after last year’s THE ICE TOWER and 2015’s APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD, is Eddie: a capital-M Movie Star who may be at the end of her illustrious career. Maybe it’s the burn from international success; maybe it’s the cancer metastasizing inside of her—who’s to say? Wooed to Rome for a brazen French/Italian co-production, Eddie and her gal Friday (a very game Noémie Merlant) dive headfirst into the future, as only a high-powered 1980s mega-production could deliver.

With a body of work about shifting and parallel fantasies, it’s no surprise that Mandico would eventually set his sights on cinema itself. And with Cotillard’s ferocious performance, he has the perfect vessel for exploring this dream space with equally gorgeous and complex interiority. An instant entry into the Movie-About-Movies Hall of Fame, ROMA ELASTICA is a pure pleasure object, hitting at the surface and burrowing far underneath. #MANDICO4EVA (JAKE ISGAR)