Selfie-comedy by Latvian absurdist Laila Pakalnina — the ‘Snow White’ of the Instagram and fitness madness era
"Magic mirror in my hand..." - a young woman with a fit figure and a villainous squint says languidly while staring intently into the lens of the front camera. She recently married a handsome widower - a gym owner - and now devotes all her free time to a sweaty fitness routine, endless self-admiration, and attempts to prove to everyone her status of the healthy lifestyle queen. Everything would be fine, but a competitor is already looming on the horizon - her husband’s young daughter named Snow White is not only more fair and more athletic than her stepmother, but also manages to break her record for burpees. During a serious and even dangerous conflict, Snow White escapes from her father's CrossFit kingdom to a mysterious forest. Universal folklore and fairy tales that are understandable at all times often serve as the basis for topical stories, but rarely does anyone adapt them as wittily as Laila Pakalnina. One of the main directors of the Baltics has already transferred the plot of Cinderella to Soviet Latvia (film "Shoe" in 1998), and now she is placing the Brothers Grimm characters in the space of modern human neuroses. "In the Mirror" is a whimsical satire on the world of social media narcissism and body cult, created with Pakalnina’s usual b/w palette and chaotic selfie aesthetics: the actors filmed themselves on portable cameras, addressing monologues directly to the viewer. The image of the evil stepmother was embodied on the screen by the prima of the Latvian National Ballet Elza Leimane, the role of Snow White went to the debutante - a young dancer named Madlena Valdberga, and the seven "gnomes" were played by real bodybuilders, acrobats, parkourists and trail bikers.
Original language: Latvian Subtitles: Belarusian | English