Forever Your Maternal Animal

Elsa returns home to Costa Rica from studying in Europe to find her family unmoored and teetering on the edge. Her younger sister lives like a recluse in the crumbling family home, surrounded by a shady older crowd and slipping into esoteric paranoia. Her father dates increasingly younger women, while her mother obsesses over republishing a collection of erotic poems written in her youth. Alarmed in the face of such disarray, Elsa feels compelled to assume the role of parent and put things right—but in a family flipped upside down, who can claim to lead the best kind of life?

At the heart of Valentina Maurel’s latest exploration of familial alienation is a vortex of dysfunction at once unsettling and deeply grounded. Blending dark naturalism with an occult edge and led by a trio of inimitable tumultuous women, Forever Your Maternal Animal plumbs the depths of individual ego and pits obsession against aimlessness in a search for order and authenticity.