If someone had told me I'd see Sadie Sink playing an androgynous, guitar-playing punk rocker trying to save the world, I would have said no way. This doesn't mean I can't imagine Sadie playing unique characters, because she's one of the brightest young stars we have today. However, I find it strange that a film like this is coming out. O'Dessa tells the story of the protagonist, who finds herself orphaned and alone on her desolate farm after her mother dies from an illness. In a land where plasma turns the grass purple and the water brown, O'Dessa must fulfill a prophecy about "the seventh son." Yes, she is the seventh son, and that's just reality; there's nothing strange about it.
What's special about O'Dessa is how it takes a basic sci-fi romance and elevates it through gender role reversals and queer-coded politics. Visually, the film seems to have taken The Hunger Games and I Saw the Shining from Television and thrown them into a blender with the title "for OTT." Look, the color grading is necessary, but the costumes for the supporting characters, specifically the villain and his lover, could have been much better. However, that's probably the only flaw I can find. O'Dessa knows exactly what it's about.
Director: Geremy Jasper
Writer: Geremy Jasper
Stars: Sadie Sink, Murray Bartlett, Regina Hall
It's a film about a chosen one, but this chosen one plays the six strings and aims to use the power of love to free everyone from authoritarianism. At first glance, you could see O'Dessa as a love story between a red-haired folk singer and a blue-haired pop star who oozes sex appeal. Clearly, these two people come from very different worlds, but their attraction is electrifying, and they have nothing left to lose—except the power to love whoever they want.
I know this all sounds pretty corny, but in a world where grass doesn't grow thanks to plasma, and where the only thing on TV is a show where people have to entertain or they'll turn into "plasma-faced" humans, this seems like the appropriate reaction. But hey, if like me, you didn't know this movie was going to be a real musical, let me tell you. The movie has three songs in its first 12 minutes. You can imagine it going that way, but it's not like In the Heights with its songs and dances, or even like Pitch Perfect; it sort of makes its own way. The movie uses its songs to tell the story, but it doesn't develop entire scenes through them. Most of them are just a person and their guitar, meandering until they find a purpose.
So it would be a disservice to the musical if I didn't talk about the music. There's definitely something familiar about O'Dessa's music. I'm not an expert, so I can't comment on why it sounds the way it does; However, I've been stuck with Bruno Mars' "Gorilla" ever since I heard the last song in the film. I know thematically, it has nothing to do with the film, or even the same genre, but somehow, it kept reminding me of it. But I think this is a good thing because it's a catchy song that will stay with you long after the movie is over. However, despite being a movie about music saving the day, I don't think the music matters that much. Somehow, the amalgamation of everything associated with this movie makes it the perfect film.
For the queer community, this is a revolutionary film. It doesn't focus on a single letter of the LGBTQ+ community like much of current queer media does. It doesn't insert queer-coded characters simply to appeal to a wider audience. It doesn't try to be progressive, as much as I hate to say there is such a thing as "being progressive." In O'Dessa, everyone is colorful and everyone has been oppressed, so a sense of melancholic happiness hangs over the purple skies of Satellite City. It's a film for everyone, but also for no one. It's simply a film.
Sadie Sink plays the main character with youthful charm, still exuding the traditional ideal of the "demure" girl. After seeing the film, I can't imagine anyone else embodying O'Dessa the way she did, perhaps because it's the music that truly connects her to the character. But she's not the only highlight of this film. Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays her love interest, Euri, and does so with such poise and elegance that one can't help but feel mesmerized. At first, they seem like an unlikely duo; they have nothing in common, and their music is completely different. But Euri finds herself in this "damsel in distress" situation, and O'Dessa is the only one who can get him out of sex work.
Plutonovich's big dance number will make you want to tear your eyes out and set them on fire (apologies for the violence), which makes perfect sense.
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