Fantasia International Film Festival 2025 – The term Lynchian gets tossed around a lot, especially lately. It’s often used to describe anything weird and surreal. In some cases, the term doesn’t fit. However, it does apply to writer/director Julie Pacino‘s feature debut I Live Here Now. The film even includes a memorable appearance by Sheryl Lee, best known as Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks.
Julie Pacino, the daughter of Al Pacino, crafted an arresting and visually striking debut. The movie stars Lucy Fry as Rose, a would-be actress who just landed her first major role, though she’s told that she has to lose three pounds. Like Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, Pacino’s feature does tackle the challenges young actresses face and the cutthroat nature of Hollywood. Pacino depicts the nightmare that exists behind the glitz and the glam. However, her feature is concerned with a bit more than that and centers the female experience.
More specifically, the feature really hits its narrative drive when Rose finds out that she’s pregnant. To continue her career, she wants to abort the child via a pill, but everyone around her has other plans and insists upon telling her what to do, including Travis (Matt Rife), who impregnated her, and even more so, Travis’ wealthy mom, Martha, played by Lee. Though Lee’s screentime is limited, she’s utterly captivating and frightening in the role of a domineering mother. To complicate the plot thread further, Rose harbors trauma from an invasive procedure she had as a kid, shown in the opening minutes. This looms over her decision and continually haunts her, manifesting in various ways.
The movie really gets weird when Rose stays at a remote hotel that shares some similarities with the Red Room in Twin Peaks, at least in terms of some of the color design and the feeling that it’s another dimension and otherworldly. There, Rose meets Lillian (Madeline Brewer), who serves as a villain of sorts, trying to thwart Rose’s decision. Brewer, fresh off the series finale of The Handmaid’s Tale, really turns in a great performance. Here, she’s all kinds of menacing and at times, unhinged. Somehow, Rose manages a cool head.
Doorways are a running motif throughout Lynch’s work, including as pathways to other dimensions, parallel universes, and even glimpses into the past. Pacino uses doorways in a similar fashion. Nearly every doorway that Rose opens within the hotel shows a chilling image or offers insight into her past. Pacino uses the symbol rather effectively, and the set and production designs, especially within the hotel, really enhance the film’s uncanniness and indelible images. Yet, despite all of the weirdness, Pacino still keeps the film grounded with the very human story about Rose’s decisions regarding her body and her future.
While some of the narrative threads in I Live Here Now at times feel muddled, Pacino has an eye and talent for crafting engrossing visuals. In this case, Lynchian is a term that absolutely fits this film. I Live Here Now mixes the surreal with a very human story. Pacino created a feature debut that’s absolutely absorbing, despite some of its flaws.
