Everglades City (1985)

• 83%
• 1985
• Matthew Geller

Geller fuses the "look of television and the fantasy of film" in his feature-length work Everglades City. Set in the Florida Everglades, this ambitious piece is a contemporary fairy tale. A young woman struggles to free herself from a small town and her demanding, eccentric family. Her search leads to her doppelganger, a mysterious woman — half-human, half-bird — who lives in the mangrove swamps outside town. In confronting the psychological Other, she comes to terms with her own spiritual dilemma. This quest for self-identity resonates with the archetypal themes of such fairy tales as Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. In a narrative shot through with ambiguity and hidden meanings, the languorous, menacing landscape acts as a visual metaphor for the human imagination.