In 'Magic Farm,' viral video makers go off the grid but can't escape the algorithm

The prickly drama “Magic Farm” is simply a travel to agrarian Argentina that feels similar flipping done a carousel of ironic souvenir postcards. The latest spot of mischief by filmmaker Amalia Ulman (“El Planeta”), it’s astir however making the satellite smaller hasn’t widened our curiosity arsenic overmuch arsenic shrunk it into snarky bites — successful short, it’s astir going everyplace and seeing nothing.

Chloë Sevigny plays Edna, the big of a globe-trotting web bid that seeks retired quality involvement stories: Bolivian teenage exorcists, Mexican fashionistas successful scimitar-shaped boots and now, a vocalist called Super Carlitos who dresses similar a bunny and bops astir a colony called San Cristobal. The gag is that Edna and her accumulation unit are fundamentally close-minded. Crew members Elena (Ulman), Jeff (Alex Wolff), Justin (Joe Apollonio) and Dave (Simon Rex) assertion they marque documentaries, but they truly lone privation catchy headlines and traffic. (It whitethorn punctual you of Vice Magazine, which covered the aforesaid Mexican footwear inclination successful a 2011 nonfiction titled “Look astatine These F— Boots!”)

The film’s ain director, however, is simply a crisp and clever societal professional who investigates insincerity. Ulman is thing of an online anthropologist-slash-modern artist. Her 2014 breakout took spot connected Instagram, wherever she spent months pretending to beryllium an aspiring L.A. “It” miss — adjacent faking a boob occupation — for a three-act calamity she aboriginal called “Excellences & Perfections.” Her pieces run connected 3 levels: the superficial, the sarcastic and, buried heavy beneath those, an outrage that she holds choky to her chest. Fluent successful posturing and hypocrisy, Ulman looks similar an influencer and thinks similar Luis Buñuel. She’s ever sniffing retired the scam.

Ulman besides acts successful “Magic Farm” arsenic Edna’s producer, Elena, with a biography parallel to her own: Argentinian-born, Spanish-raised, chill and detached. Elena comes crossed arsenic the astir together, but what looks similar serenity is really disdain. As the lone squad subordinate who speaks Spanish, Elena is alert that lone she tin support the others from looking similar the idiots that they are. She’s often excessively lazy to bother. In her absence, Rex’s Dave pleads astatine a table clerk, “Do you person vape charger para aquí?”

The Super Carlito expedition is doomed to failure. The radical isn’t conscionable successful the incorrect municipality — they’re successful the incorrect country. (As is the mode of things, Jeff dumps the blasted connected an offscreen intern he’s schtupping.) Adding to the confusion, their on-site interaction Marita (Abuela Marita) has disappeared, perchance successful transportation with her apocalyptic Christian temple. No 1 thinks to poke into this with a follow-up question like, “She thinks the satellite is going to end? When?”

Instead, these American Americans, arsenic the Yankees telephone themselves, are distracted by the idiosyncratic dramas they bring to this mediocre farmland. Justin, a sunny Dirk Diggler clone, has daddy issues that mushroom into a crush connected Guillermo Jacubowicz’s nameless edifice receptionist, a humble azygous father. Meanwhile, narcissistic heartbreaker Jeff snags the attraction of San Cristobal’s nonmigratory glamour miss Manchi (Camila del Campo), who spends her nights taking selfies for OnlyFans and her days scaling trees to get capable compartment work to nonstop them to her subscribers.

It would beryllium a mistake to presume the locals are victims. Their polite English lone makes them dependable accommodating — they’ve each got their ain secrets and desires. Plus, the connection spread works successful Jeff’s favor, with Manchi fantasizing astir him successful furniture portion she tunes into his dependable connected a podcast, pleasantly oblivious to however he’s prattling connected astir a atrocious sushi dinner.

Jacubowicz and Del Campo are astonishing discoveries. He has the tender, shining eyes of an ingenue portion Del Campo, who has a striking birthmark connected her cheek, is simply a femme fatale capable to clasp her ain against Wolff’s selfish, useless playboy. Flopping astir similar a boiled noodle, Wolff should beryllium excessively large for the movie. His show is the loudest happening successful it by an amplitude of 10. (When Edna accuses Jeff of taking excessively overmuch of the equine tranquilizer ketamine, helium whines, “Maybe I am a pony!”) But helium and Ulman are having truthful overmuch amusive making amusive of Jeff and the faux-woke wastrels helium represents that his squawking nonsense comes to harmonize with Burke Battelle’s score, a funky cacophony of synthesizers that sounds similar idiosyncratic bouncing connected a duck.

None of these journalists judge they’re serving a higher intent different than contented farming. But Ulman has strung unneurotic a nett of absorbing observations: glances, insults, mistaken presumptions and gaslighting fibs. Nearly each of her characters — including the locals — are spending excessively overmuch vigor creating things for online consumption. They’re each tangled up successful a worldwide web.

Every country has a delight: Manchi stabbing balloons with a knife, Edna’s out-of-place cloven-toed precocious heels, the lilt successful Justin’s dependable arsenic helium smiles astatine a thoroughfare mutt and says, “What’s up, dog?” Cinematographer Carlos Rigo and exertion Arturo Sosa groove on with eye-catching colors and skateboard-video-style visuals, adjacent inserting B-roll from a camera strapped to a horse’s caput and doing a melodramatic zoom to a sheep.

You mightiness wonderment if the acid-neon writer is excessively green. These pseudo-reporters won’t notice. Pay attraction to everything they disregard — the buzzing airplanes retired of view, the offerings of bottled soda alternatively of water, the casual inheritance conversations astir crab and decease — and you’ll spot that Ulman has seeded different communicative underneath her comic surface, 1 astir however the radical successful this municipality are getting crushed by large concern and atrocious government.

It turns retired there’s plentifulness worthy covering successful San Cristobal. But Ulman is excessively skeptical to suggest these yahoos could redeem themselves by ferreting retired the existent problems happening successful her location country. She has zero religion successful their involvement successful existent quality and not overmuch much successful our own. What’s the constituent of telling the information if nary 1 volition click connected it? And however astute to fell her ain sincerity wrong this marvelous romp.