I Live Here Now

With I Live Here Now, Julie Pacino delivers a debut feature that feels less like a conventional film and more like a fever dream scrawled in neon light. Premiering at the Fantasia International Film Festival, the film immediately announces itself as a bold and unsettling psychodrama, one that channels the disorienting surrealism of David Lynch and the operatic dread of Dario Argento while still finding a distinct personal voice. At its heart is Lucy Fry, giving the kind of performance that anchors chaos with humanity, as she embodies Rose, a struggling actress whose sense of self splinters under the weight of trauma, misogyny, and an unwanted pregnancy that should have been impossible. What unfolds is not just a story about survival, but a hallucinatory confrontation with the ghosts of one’s own body and history.

From its opening scenes in Los Angeles, Julie Pacino establishes a contrast between the sun-drenched glamour of Hollywood ambition and the corrosive underbelly of its industry. Rose’s audition, overseen by agent Cindy (a sharp and calculating Cara Seymour), requires her to lose three pounds in four days, a grotesque reminder of the dehumanizing demands placed on actresses. This sequence, bathed in cold blues after an earlier golden-hued lovemaking scene with her boyfriend Travis (played with smarmy ease by comedian Matt Rife), captures the dichotomy between aspiration and exploitation. The discovery of her pregnancy—despite a traumatic childhood surgery that supposedly left her infertile—shatters any semblance of stability. And when Travis’s domineering mother Martha (the always magnetic Sheryl Lee) enters the picture, insisting control over Rose’s body and choices, the narrative tips fully into nightmare.

It is at The Crown Inn, however, where I Live Here Now crystallizes into something hauntingly unique. The motel is less a location than a manifestation of Rose’s fractured psyche, painted in oppressive pinks and violent reds, with rooms that feel like traps disguised as sanctuaries. Here she encounters Sid (played with eerie innocence by Sarah Rich), Ada (the martini-soaked, world-weary owner brought to life by Lara Clear), and Lillian (a feral and mischievous Madeline Brewer), each of whom appears less like separate characters than distorted fragments of Rose’s self. The interactions between Rose and Lillian, in particular, carry a dangerous magnetism—two women circling one another like predator and prey, or perhaps mirror images of rage and desire. The production design by Lucie Brooks Butler and Hannah Lawson is stunningly excessive, transforming every corridor into a metaphorical womb, every flickering light into a symptom of Rose’s internal collapse.

What is most striking about Julie Pacino’s debut is the way it weaponizes style to excavate psychology. The saturated colours and surreal mise-en-scène are not decoration but the very language of Rose’s unraveling, each shift in palette reflecting her changing states of mind. When Rose discovers cigarette burns hidden behind the wardrobe or watches Lillian swallow glass with unsettling calm, the imagery works less as shock and more as allegory—the self-destructive impulses women internalize when society robs them of autonomy. Even the recurring motif of crowns, found in Rose’s sketches and echoed in the inn’s décor, hovers between empowerment and oppression, at once symbols of sovereignty and the suffocating expectations of womanhood.

Lucy Fry’s performance cannot be overstated. She plays Rose not as a victim but as a woman clawing her way through layers of imposed identity. Her fragility is undercut by an undercurrent of feral strength, and when the film finally allows her a moment of reclamation, it feels less like triumph than rebirth through fire. Opposite her, Madeline Brewer thrives as a devil-on-the-shoulder figure, injecting the narrative with both menace and seduction. Sheryl Lee, forever tied to David Lynch’s mythology as Laura Palmer, relishes the chance to play the monster rather than the victim, her matriarchal venom dripping into every scene. Even Matt Rife, better known for comedy, slips into the role of emasculated man-child with surprising precision, embodying the kind of weak partner whose mother’s control defines his every action.

There is no denying that I Live Here Now sometimes teeters on the edge of excess. Its dream logic can become repetitive, its symbolism at times overwhelming, as if Julie Pacino wanted to pour every idea she ever had about trauma and womanhood into one canvas. Yet this very overstuffed quality feels inextricable from the film’s power. Rose’s mind is overcrowded, her body colonized by others’ expectations, and the film’s refusal to pare itself down mirrors that suffocating state. The echoes of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper are unmistakable, as Rose’s confinement becomes both literal and psychological.

What lingers long after the credits, though, is not just the horror but the deeply personal nature of Julie Pacino’s storytelling. The daughter of Al Pacino could easily have leaned on her family name, but instead she has delivered a film that feels furiously her own, brimming with risk, pain, and sincerity. By shooting on 35mm and 16mm with cinematographer Aron Meinhardt, she imbues the film with a tactile richness that pulls viewers into Rose’s labyrinthine consciousness. The result is not a flawless debut, but one of rare audacity, one that invites viewers to interpret, resist, and even argue with its meaning.

I Live Here Now is less about linear storytelling than about the sensation of being trapped—trapped in a body that feels alien, in a world that demands impossible perfection, in a society that claims ownership over women’s choices. Rose’s journey is a descent into this inferno, but also an emergence from it, bruised yet sovereign. For some, the film may feel impenetrable, even indulgent, but for those willing to surrender to its surreal rhythms, it offers a searing exploration of female identity that is as exhilarating as it is unsettling. In Julie Pacino, cinema has found a fearless new voice, and in Lucy Fry, an actress who has given one of the most compelling performances of her career. Together, they have created a nightmare worth inhabiting.

I Live Here Now
Written and directed by ;Julie Pacino
Produced by Kyle Kaminsky, Julie Pacino
Starring Lucy Fry, Madeline Brewer, Matt Rife, Sheryl Lee
Cinematography : Aron Meinhardt
Edited by Mátyás Fekete, Raaghav Minocha
Music by Jackson Greenberg, Pam Autuori
Production companies : Punch Once, Tiny Apples, Artak Pictures
Distributed by Utopia
Release date : July 24, 2025 (Fantasia)
Running time :  91 minutes

Seen September 9 2025 at the Deauville International Center

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