El Rostro de la Medusa (The Face of the Jellyfish) – Review

This film screened at the 21st annual Tallgrass Film Festival.

I’ve never seen anything quite like this outside of David Lynch’s student films and yet I wanted it to be weirder. Still, Melisa Liebenthal’s film El Rostro de la Medusa is a special experiment that asks questions about identity and image that I haven’t seen quite like this.

Marina (Rocío Stellato) woke up one day and her face was no longer her face. After some swelling had gone down she saw that her eyes, lips, cheekbones, and entire facial structure had changed. Doctors can’t explain it, her own mother doesn’t recognize her, and the government will not renew her ID. What’s a woman to do?

Liebenthal isn’t so much interested in any horror surrounding this sort of experience as she is in what someone might do with it. The structures of one’s appearance and behavior might be tied together, the disconnect freeing. Marina’s life is one of structure. She’s a teacher, lives with her mother, and has a nice boyfriend who loves her whatever face she shows. Marina, however, sounds like she was bored before the change. We first notice it when she mentions to a medical professional that her boyfriend is Columbian. He touches her face gently and asks, “So, you like Columbians?” Her eyes betray a fascination that wasn’t there before, recognizing that she might be able to have new experiences with this clean slate of a face.

Structurally this is very experimental. It ties things like fingerprint and facial recognition specs together with animals, movement, and snapshots. Each thing is shown to have a pattern and uniqueness and then when morphed can no longer be mapped on the previous image. Marina’s plight isn’t really a plight, merely a new identity despite remaining the same person physically. Intercut throughout the film, these sequences serve as the most unsettling series of imagery that Liebenthal has crafted as a counter to the relatively subdued narrative scenes.

Most, if not many, will be baffled by El Rostro de la Medusa but I think it’s a wonderful film. Its small scale is its advantage, allowing for the jagged edges to serve as a feature instead of a bug. Melisa Liebenthal has crafted a strange and wonderous film that is as irritating as enlightening, a puzzle to be put together by an audience that all has different pieces.