Runtime: 101 minutes
Directed by: Agnieszka Smoczynska
Starring: Andrzej Konopka, Reika Kirishima, Noomi Rapace, George Aurimas Cris, Filippa Kaye
From: Many different European companies
Going into a theatrical movie almost blind doesn’t always work out. It wasn’t until Tuesday that I had even heard of Hot Spot; one location in Orlando has it. The movie is from the lady Polish director w/ the long name that did The Lure. Some will be offended that none of her movies had been seen by me before, not even The Lure. I knew that it featured Noomi Rapace & a lady who was in Drive My Car—yet another picture unseen by me as of now. Otherwise, the setting was the only other detail known.
This should have been to my tastes, and as first I thought it would be. The world is a dystopian hellscape-water a precious resource-where everyone is plugged into AI to survive. There are those that oppose this of course-they resemble the Fremen from Dune. Our detective lead is an 80’s-looking dude w/ an amazing head of blonde curly head (the director’s husband, it turns out) who not only had the appearance of a JOE EXOTIC cosplayer, but listens to 1980’s songs and has incredible fits. He rides in a driverless car which is a 90’s Citroen sedan. As a synthwave 80’s-sounding tune is heard, I was hoping this would be an oddity right up my alley.
Now, I never saw a trailer for the film; from reading other reviews, that was incredibly misleading anyhow. From the opening, I thought the story would concern a murder and that Rapace would be involved. Well, her role wasn’t too large anyhow; what the movie was about instead… unfortunately this is one of those where the director has literally told viewers this is more about “vibes” than “plot” or “story.” That is typically an “uh oh” for me.
Sadly, this is one of those obtuse, irritating European arthouse flicks I’m happy to normally avoid… only it seems that even some who enjoy such things found Hot Spot to have a muddled plot. This being shot in English (I know done mostly to earn financing) wasn’t the best idea when the accents and pronunciations were sometimes incomprehensible to my ears, and I usually don’t have a problem with such things. That didn’t help with my confusion, but I’d have been baffled anyhow even w/o this issue. A major plot point could either be literal or figurative… it’d be WTF if literal but then again this is a world that now has hairy small sandworm creatures and a supporting lady has elf ears, except that it appeared they were a fashion accessory as it looked as she took them off before a major event occurred.
I know some will enjoy this weird & HORNY film and that’s great. I at least was more puzzled than angry about the experience. The cinematography was nice, as was the desert setting which featured Brutalist architecture. It is a shame that an original property like this from Europe that has details I enjoyed featured a nothingburger of a story which missed the mark this badly. Perhaps it’d be better for everyone (me included) if a streaming rental at home w/ subtitles occurred as that’d eliminate a major problem but I would still not care about the characters, feeling totally detached from the experience.
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