by Lizzie McNeely

“Well . . . that was rather second wave,” my friend Julia whispered to me as the credits for CHAOTIC ANA rolled.

For those of you who didn’t take Women’s Studies 101, the second wave was the 1970s era of feminism that tended to assume that females were united both through a universal essence and through their shared oppression by males. I’m oversimplifying, but the theories did also. At its thematic core, CHAOTIC ANA does too, but at least it oversimplifies within an intriguing, bold framework that visually delights.

The first hint that CHAOTIC ANA pits women against men is when, in the second scene, Ana is attacked by a horse’s giant penis at a nightclub. Hallucination? Probably. Nevertheless, much more terrifying than typical nightclub leers.

I immediately lose sympathy for Ana’s penis horrors when I enviously discover her hot Venus de Milo bod and idyllic life as a flower child living in an Ibiza cave. Her daily schedule includes painting rocks and skinnydipping in the turquoise Mediterranean.

Paradise can’t last forever though. The date has flashed on the screen – September 2001. We all know that shit’s about to hit the fan.

Sure enough, Ana rapidly departs to an artist enclave sponsored by a wealthy Madrid matron. Here, she is advised to use oils to give her paintings more depth. Ana protests that she prefers the escapism of her naïve pastel art, but her efforts to remain on the surface of things are foiled when she suffers a hallucination while dining beside a celebrated hypnotist. Turns out, Ana has two millenniums worth of spirits residing in her soul and they’re all women who’ve died tragically young, seemingly due to violent, lying scumbags.

A cross-continental, female empowerment mission ensues. It’s a ride; you won’t be bored. It seems that all political tragedies are related to the personal tragedies within Ana: the troubles of Native Americans, the disenfranchisement of the Hassaniya speaking Arab-Berber people, the Iraq war. Screenwriter and director Julio Medem attempts to make a lot of points here. Too many.

Fortunately, Ana is a captivating, likeable protagonist, played pitch perfectly by Manuela Vellès. She convincingly conveys the full spectrum of the female experience as embodied in Ana: innocence, wisdom, confidence, sexuality and pain. The film is carried by her performance.

The film is curious, lively and raises many questions. You’ll want to go out with your girlfriends afterwards to interpret and to plot female vengeance upon male oppression. Maybe you’ll even choose Ana’s tactic, which I won’t reveal because it has to be seen. Let’s just say that I thought shit was going to hit the fan, and it did.

The next screenings are on September 11th at the Scotiabank at1:00pm and September 14th at the Cumberland at 6:15pm. As a side note, are the morality police on patrol? While waiting in line for this screening a TIFF employee asked how old I was. First, do I honestly look like I’m seventeen? Second, even if I were who cares? I guarantee the police are not going to crash a TIFF screening.