Maniac Miki (2022) film review

After being cast off from his long-running TV show, Miki spends his days whiling away time on his narrowboat trying to make sense of his life in Carla Forte’s Maniac Miki.

The camera spins and swirls around an opening montage of Miami where, as the audience, we lose our bearings almost immediately. A piano score enlightens our journey as it moves up and down the scales and then we are introduced to Miki – a sad, scared, and somewhat bitter man who, having recently lost his job, has been left to flounder along the City’s coastline on his small narrowboat. With only one or two friends who still interact with him, he remains at a loss with no idea where to turn next in order to improve his situation.

Maniac Miki is a film by the Venezuelan director Carla Forte who is one of the most intriguing and interesting female directors and writers to emerge recently. Forte’s style has obviously been influenced by auteurs such as Bela Tarr, Lars Von Trier, and Michael Haneke, and although Maniac Miki remains a particularly calm and patient piece of work, it does give us the sense that we are watching someone else’s nightmare unfolding, and early on it is intimated that this particular journey is not going to end too well. While I feel the film will prove to be a bit too much of a slog for casual viewers, it’s still an impressive achievement thanks to Forte’s eye for visuals and two very strong central performances.

Life is pretty bleak for Miki (an excellent Carlos Antonio León); from the first melancholy frame of Maniac Miki, it remains pretty gloomy for the rest of its 82-minute run time. This is the type of movie that, although correctly listed as “black and white”, could quite simply be called “grey”, mainly because each scene looks like a dull cloudy evening. Yet, thanks to Forte’s direction and her cinematographer Alexey Taran, the black and white imagery is gleaming, while also keeping a sombre tone that lends everything that happens an immersive clarity. A film that is already in experimental mode from its opening few scenes begins to get more surreal and irreverent, which allows us to question Miki’s motives, what his future holds, and what the repercussions might be for his excessive behaviour. There are cuts to shocking close-ups punctuated throughout the movie and although jarring they do work, leaving everything feeling a little unsettled.

Leon fills Miki with a desperation that makes his plight all the more tragic; he doesn’t just need to survive, he needs a job to climb out of the hole he has found himself in. He needs success. Opposite León is the extremely headstrong Lola Amores, who plays his partner Mimi; she more than holds her own against Miki’s cruel sarcasm and stinging barbs. She also gives as good as she gets, with her only weakness being the love she has for this ungrateful man who really doesn’t deserve it.

A completely original film, Forte manages to capture the sad, excessive, and abusive reality behind a world that manufactures dreams for the masses but yet will still throw people on the scrap heap when they have outlived their usefulness.