Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus

CRYSTAL FAIRY is a comedy of sorts set in Chile, made in Chile by Chileans but starring American actors. It is pretty unique in that aspect. It feels at times like a foreign film but mostly like one of the many American dramedies of the style that emerged in the last decade and a half. It's hard to shake the whole Michael Cera vibe.

Not that I don't like Michael Cera. He's fun to watch sometimes and a good actor. But this film is what it is and it's not exactly what I wanted it to be. That said, it's still kind of fun and there are some good laughs in here. It's not too long. It's got a sort of thrown-together feel, but in a good way. Looks like they had fun making it. I read that it's based on a true story. Recommend for those looking for something different but not too different.

Hiding behind masks that cover their vulnerability, two Americans in Chile, Jamie (Michael Cera) and Crystal Fairy, a young free-spirited woman (Gaby Hoffmann), spar off against each other in Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva's psychedelic comedy Crystal Fairy. The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and won the Directing Award for World Cinema at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Jamie's act is one of controlling, overly-aggressive behavior but not quite the "Ugly American," while Crystal's is the opposite but equally phony, a caricature of a "hippie" filled with love for everyone who spouts clichés about chakras and mother earth, walks around her hotel room naked, engages in healing rituals, and chides the others for eating junk food.

It's hard to tell if the director is using her persona as a means of ridiculing these ideas or just showing how inauthentic she is. In any event, Crystal and Jamie's way of being, while it fills a need for them, has costs in sacrificing who they really are. On the surface, the film is a road trip to find a psychedelic substance in the San Pedro cactus plant which, when boiled for twelve hours and ingested, has the properties of mescaline (it has been said that the actors used mescaline while shooting the film). In essence, however, the film is not really about mescaline but about releasing rigid patterns of behavior and discovering new ways of interacting that are more fulfilling.

The film begins at a party where Silva's hand-held camera-work and improvised conversation is established. On a cocaine high, the caustic Jamie invites a partygoer, a girl who calls herself Crystal Fairy to accompany him and his friends on a quest to repeat the spiritual high described in Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception. When Crystal takes him up on the offer the next day (which he has forgotten that he even made), he is dismayed by her annoying behavior, even though his Chilean friends, Champa (Juan Andres Silva) and his two brothers Lel (Jose Miguel Silva) and Pilo (Augustin Silva), seem more tolerant, perhaps because at least one does not understand English. Their trip to the ocean to locate and purchase a piece of the San Pedro cactus from reluctant residents is one of the comic highlights of the film, even though Jamie has to eventually use surreptitious means to acquire it.

Crystal Fairy ends up in a good place even though it is more than a little irritating in getting there. During the trip, Jamie and Crystal talk to each other, but at cross purposes. The results are unpredictable but, suffice it to say, their longing for a spiritual experience does not take the form that Huxley described. Michael Cera's role is out of character from the lovable, nerdy self he has played in earlier movies, but he is terrific in this film, totally natural and very real, as is Hoffmann in her role, both continuing to reveal a new dimension to their character. Ultimately, the group's sharing about their fears and their discovery of how their act no longer serves their purpose in life is more open and honest than anything I've seen in films recently and stays in the memory.

I am late seeing this flick and I must disagree with a few other reviewers and their take on this very simple yet complex movie.

Once again Sebastián Silva is offering up questions on youth and how youth sees the world around them. Jamie is obviously a self centered person with a limited experience in communicating with others (sort of like the US) (as Jamie is an American) and we can see this in his 'attitude' throughout the story. The other three boys have had to share with others and they try to make the best of their trip to the beach. Jamie, on the other hand insist they do it as planed.

Enter Crystal Fairy into this mix and you already have an altered perception of exactly what they want to do - she is like the drug reduced from the cactus later in the story (she has an altered view of reality). She wants to share everything the three other boys don't seem to mind. Jamie can't tolerate it - he wants none of her.

Crystal mothers them, she wants to know them, the boys are like children to her - yet she is very childlike herself. Jamie suddenly wants to be friends with her but only when he's 'high', after he comes down he's back to his original self. Crystal leaves quietly, Jamie sees her leave and calls her name, Crystal disappears behind a rock.

What is Silva showing us here? Crystal is the personality of many different people, she's giving, caring, willing to accept life on her own and take risks - and being alone isn't easy, she is alone throughout the movie and Jamie thinks she's a phony. Jamie cannot see that he is the phony because in the end Crystal is what Jamie was seeking in the brewed Cactus they drink and even when high he could not accept it.

Michael Cera goes a long way toward changing his lovable doofus image in this road trip movie with a laid back and ultimately rather sweet vibe.

Cera plays an obnoxious American vacationing in Chile who's trying to chase down a special kind of cactus that has mind-altering capabilities when the juice is distilled and drunk. Along for the ride are three native Chilean brothers and another American, a hippie-dippie girl named Crystal Fairy. The Chileans are quiet, polite and tolerant while the Americans are both unpleasant, Cera because he's a jerk and Crystal Fairy because she tries too hard. If this had stayed yet another Americans-behaving-badly movie I wouldn't have liked it. But it goes a very different, and welcome, direction, as the group's time together causes defenses to be relaxed and vulnerabilities to emerge.

"Crystal Fairy" does a great job of capturing that unique dynamic that evolves when a random assortment of people spend a lot of time together on a road trip. The characters created by Cera and Gaby Hoffman (who plays Crystal Fairy) certainly aren't pleasant to spend time with for much of the film's running time, but they're so like people I've actually known that it's fascinating to watch their performances and how thoroughly they can create characters that feel so authentic.

I was already won over by the film's casual, relaxed atmosphere by the time the last few scenes came around, and then, after a late-act revelation and the sensitive way in which the film handles it, decided that I had sort of fallen in love with it.

Grade: A

This is my opinion. I think this movie is incredibly deep but in a light kind of way, in a way that the viewer learns from it what applies and relevant for him. I think it's honest, a rare thing in movies these days. No clichés, no bullshit. I think it makes you think, makes you feel. It makes you connect with the characters, almost as if you are traveling with them. And what I liked most about this movie is the "twist", when who you think is the main character turns out to be just the scenery for the real deal.

I recommend this a lot to people who are done with the Hollywood industry, who are looking for something real and worth watching, and especially to people who are about to travel, especially to travel alone. I think in some way you will learn a lot.