The French New Wave is one of the most important movements in the history of film. Director and writers like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut rejected everything that had already become traditional in filmmaking, instead focusing on experimentation, innovation, and reflexivity. The movement's impact is hard to overstate; it completely shifted what film could be and has influenced every movie since then. Its participants even directly created other trends. Famously, Truffaut was hugely involved with the creation of 1967's revolutionary Bonnie & Clyde, one of the first and defining movies of the "New Hollywood" movement that Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Robert Altman were a part of. From the biggest blockbuster to the smallest indie, the French New Wave continues to be one of the significant influences in filmmaking today.

Concurrent to (or within, depending on who you ask) the French New Wave was the Left Bank, consisting of Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, and others. These filmmakers often came from a background in documentary and took a more modernist, politically-minded approach. This is the tradition that Amalia Ulman’s debut feature, El Planeta, is a part of. Premiering to acclaim at Sundance in 2020, the black and white film is about a mother and daughter duo, Leo and María (played by Ulman and her real-life mother, Alejandra Ulman), who turn to scamming when the financial crisis of 2008 causes their fortunes to falter. The resulting movie is a wryly hilarious and poignant look at class, gender, and their intersection. With the film now streaming on HBO Max, now is as good as time as any to take a look at Ulman's unique career and new film.

Already an Accomplished Artist

Amalia Ulman looking into a shop window in her film, El Planeta
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Only in her mid-thirties, Amalia Ulman already had an illustrious career in art before she made a full-length film. Eight years ago, Ulman was crowned as “the first great Instagram artist” by Elle Magazine. In 2014, Ulman started the project, Excellences & Perfections, on her Instagram. The next few months consisted of scripted posts and images to social media portraying a partially fictitious transformation.

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Using her own life and body as a prop, the public performance explored ideas surrounding sexuality, consumerism, and personal branding. The project proved to be very popular, and her career took off from there. Since then, her work has been shown in galleries throughout the world while she continued to practice other disciplines.

Current Qualities & Future Promise

El Planeta
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With El Planeta, Amalia Ulman continued to delve into topics explored in her previous work like class, gender, and performance, but now within a narrative feature. According to the Criterion Collection's online film magazine, Current, the film was partially based on two real-life events, one personal and another outside of her own life. Mother-daughter grifter duo Justina and Ana Belén were one influence, while the other was her father winning a suit against her that gave him ownership over her apartment. These two events form the core concepts behind the movie, which is about two scammers and their fight against eviction, but they only provide the background of the day-to-day lives of the characters.

One such event is a meeting Ulman's Leo has with a potential employer, played by Nacho Vigalondo, the director behind the films Colossal and Timecrimes, who wants to hire her for sex work. Ulman thinks he will pay her a hefty sum for services rendered, but he offers much less than she initially expected, leaving her to abandon the potential income stream almost immediately. Moments like this, many with malevolent men, make up the bulk of the film's runtime and effectively comment on the intersecting themes of the film in different ways.

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There isn't too much forward momentum in El Planeta's plot, but its picaresque story works because the characters are so well-defined. In an interview with Le Cinéma Club, Ulman said, "I feel that a lot of movies about issues like poverty and evictions are overwhelmed by a sense of guilt because, usually, the directors and writers are from a different class and feel it is their duty to portray it that way. As if the poor are inherently pure at heart and have no other interest in life than finding a little job...I wanted the characters to be multidimensional and complicated." She definitely succeeded in her goal, and the film's two leads are richly nuanced.

El Planeta
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Amalia Ulman is already hard at work on her next film, which will be about climate change and set in Northern Argentina. Her extensive career in the arts and first film should be enough to get people excited about the project, but it would be reductive to only mention El Planeta as an indicator of further success. It isn't just good for a first movie, it's a good movie and shouldn't be missed now that it's widely accessible on HBO Max. Ulman is already big, and she's just getting more popular, so it's in your best interest to get acquainted with her work before you get left behind.