Festivals - Fantasia 2020 : Lucky, International Premiere

By Mulder, 11 august 2020

Author May Ryer (Brea Grant) has been out of luck lately. Her self-help books aren't selling as well as they used to, and one night a masked intruder breaks into the house she shares with her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh). Worse, Ted is curiously unconcerned about the incident, speaking nonchalantly as if she just has to accept it, while an investigator says she is lucky she got away with it. To add insult to injury, the assailant reappears again and again, continuing to terrorize May, who defends herself against an enemy who seems to have supernatural powers. When May asks for help, she inevitably faces indifference and condescension. One of her books is entitled Problem Solving for Staying Alive, and she finds herself in a situation with no apparent solution, where she may well lose her life.

Last year, Brea Grant gave an excellent performance in Jeremy Gardner's After Midnight. We now find Grant (who also wrote and directed 12 Hour Shift, another Fantasia 2020 selection) as both writer and actress in a film that uses a genre cinema motif as a central metaphor for a deeply personal drama. While May is repeatedly assaulted by her anonymous stalker and fails to gain support from others, her experiences reflect those of countless women who have become targets of abuse and assault by men and have found no help anywhere. Far from being a pamphlet, Lucky is first and foremost a captivating portrait of a woman in peril, and director Natasha Kermani Imitation gil) skillfully directs Grant's script, which gradually slides into supernatural areas. But even as these elements become more pronounced, LUCKY remains grounded in identifiable and distressing current concerns, to the point where Ted's statement - "This is just how things are" - is perhaps the most disturbing thing.

Synopsis :
A suburban woman fights to be believed as she finds herself stalked by a threatening figure who returns to her house night after night. When she can't get help from those around her, she is forced to take matters into her own hands.

Lucky
Directed by Natasha Kermani
Produced by Chelsea Davenport, Patrick Ewald p.g.a., Robert Galluzzo, Kimberly Hwang
Written by Brea Grant
Starring Yasmine Al-Bustami, Brea Grant, Kristina Klebe, Kausar Mohammed, Dhruv Uday Singh, Hunter C. Smith
Music by Jeremy Zuckerman
Cinematography : Julia Swain
Edited by Chris Willet
Production company : Epic Pictures
Running time : 81mns

(Source : Fantasia 2020 official website)