TIFF 2014 Review: 'Luna' Shines a Light on Fantasy, Grief

Acclaimed artist Dave McKean doesn’t abide by the rules of fantasy filmmaking. It would seem, after watching his films Mirrormask and now Luna, that he is more than willing to make what some might call “mistakes” if they are in the service of illustrating something distinctively personal and unexpected.

As such, the Oz-like fantasy worlds of Mirrormask gave heroine Stephanie Leonidas ample opportunity to explore without kowtowing to conventional story structure, pacing or the incessant demand for action and frivolity. And Luna, a more grounded motion picture about the pervasive influence of grief on memory and the imagination, indulges wholeheartedly in conventions more typically employed in Big Chill-inspired low-budget indie dramas, allowing the dynamic visual stylings of McKean to invade like unwelcome, but perhaps wholly necessary poltergeists.

Grant (Ben Daniels) and Dean (Michael Maloney) are both artists, life-long friends with wildly different ideas about the impact and demands of their work. They meet up for the first time in a long while, but there’s a gloom over the proceedings. Grant and his wife Christine (Dervla Kirwan) are still grieving from the death of their newborn child Jacob, and Dean and his young girlfriend Fraya (Stephanie Leonidas) are on tenterhooks, not sure whether to help their friends explore their turmoil or turn the weekend into Grant and Christine’s first glimpse of frivolity after their warranted, but tragic seclusion.

Grant and Christine aren’t sure what they want either, and may not have much choice in the matter: the breezy socializing is regularly impacted by delusions, hallucinations and corner-of-the-eye sightings of a child who may or may not have been theirs, nightmares about grotesque dream avatars in the woods and a wilderness surrounding Dean’s home that could be home to danger or whimsy. And as their eerie subjectivity infects them, Dean and Fraya begin to feel the impact of their own undisclosed secrets, insecurities and projections onto their friends.

Related: Dave McKean on ‘Luna’ and Why We Need Better Fantasies

It could be the source of a ripping horror yarn, but Dave McKean isn’t a mean-spirited filmmaker. He’s exploring something inexplicably fantastical about the way our minds play tricks on us, particularly in moments of overwhelming emotional onslaught. At its best, Luna is a heartachingly honest and inscrutable tale of intelligent beings getting swept up in feelings they cannot articulate, and may never experience or remember properly.

And at its worst, Luna bears the imprimatur of an artist still sussing out a new medium. For all the luminous imagery at play in Luna, there are scenes of awkward human interaction and a score that sometimes calls its shots unnecessarily, playing an original song about how words are complicated obfuscations over a scene in which all the dialogue is already an obvious veil over what isn’t being said.

Yet McKean’s willingness to be, at turns, wildly unconventional and almost innocently straightforward gives Luna a disarming honesty. It’s a direct film with indirect observations about its cast and their troubles, sweet and warm and sad and disquieting all within the same scenes. His cast does an endearing job of bringing these soulful artists to life before their situations turn broadly allegorical, so that the film’s unique and oblong CGI and animated fantasies carry the weight they need to feel necessary instead of indulgent.

It’s a bold attempt to say something meaningful and discover an artist’s voice within a new and complicated milieu, and whatever flaws it may have encumbered along the way never detract from the honesty of its intentions. Luna is half-full of wonders, half-full of naïveté, and all full of promise.