The Magic Life of V

The Magic Life of V is an unusually compact drama that completely blurs the line between documentary and fiction (and with respect to how well it works as a result, I find it unnecessary here to address where the raw recording ends and the staging begins). Some compositions are at the level of Roger Deakins and the story develops as a standard psychological drama, enhancing the characterisation of the female protagonist, conveying a limited set of motifs and culminating with an unpleasant confrontation and subsequent catharsis. The main protagonist, twenty-five-year-old Veer, moves between the fictional worlds of larping, where the film takes on the perspective of larpers and transforms into a fantasy or suspenseful survival horror movie, and reality, where she struggles with a mentally ill brother as well as with depression and anxiety – the consequences of a traumatic childhood with her father, a violent alcoholic. I see the film’s primary benefit in the perceptive examination of the possible therapeutic effects of playing games and wearing masks, activities that are otherwise often disparaged by the general public. One of the film's most emotional moments, in which I found myself more than I would have liked, occurs in the dialogue scene when Veer expresses her hope that escaping into fiction and creating alternate identities would one day no longer be a necessary means of self-preservation, but merely a simple source of pleasure. At the same time, I believe that in order for The Magic Life of V to appeal to you in the same way, you needn’t know anything about LARP or be a gamer. All you need is a bit of empathy (and perhaps a weakness for breathtaking panoramas of snow-covered landscapes). 90% (12.03.2019)