Two estranged women are forced to confront their history when they both enlist at the same dance camp.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Tori Lancaster
Starring: Imani Jade Powers, Betsey Brown, Juliet Brett, Ben Groh
There are two types of people who would enlist at an experimental dance camp: those who are fully invested in the art of dance and wish to hone their skills, and those who simply see it as a way to escape from their reality for a week or so. It's uncertain which camp (no pun intended) Sofi (Imani Jade Powers), the protagonist of writer/director Tori Lancaster's Mother Future Self falls into. She hasn't just enrolled as a student but enlisted as a resident, working under the tutelage of dance instructor Colleen (KJ Holmes), but there is a niggling sense that she doesn't really care about experimental dance all that much. For Sofi the camp most likely represents an opportunity to temporarily shed her skin. Among strangers she has the chance to reinvent herself.
If that was Sofi's plan it's immediately nuked by the arrival of Jordan (Betsey Brown). Sofi and Jordan attended college together and haven't seen each other in eight years. The film holds back in revealing the full extent of their relationship (were they simply good friends or something more?), and Sofi and Jordan are coy in discussing their past. But it is clear that things were once very intense between these two women. Their awkward reunion isn't so much a grenade thrown into the the tranquil setting of the camp but rather a bomb on a slow timer.
Rather than having her two protagonists discuss their issues with each other through dialogue, Lancaster employs the medium of dance. Sofi and Jordan are paired up as partners, their bodies entwining and entangling in an often violent push and pull that acts as a physical manifestation of their passive aggressive anger towards one another. Holmes is a real life dance instructor whose unique methods are incorporated into the film, and though her name is changed she is essentially playing a version of herself. Some of Mother Future Self's most amusing moments are a result of how oblivious Colleen is to the increasingly disruptive tension between Sofi and Jordan. It is as though Lancaster told Holmes she was making a documentary about her dance instructions while actually filming a black comedy around her.
Brown and Powers make for a compelling double act. The former is imposing and not a little scary as the forthright to the point of sociopathic Jordan. Powers has the less showy and more challenging role of the mousy Sofi, and it is very impressive how she portrays her character once again falling under the spell of a woman who clearly left her with a lot of mental scars. In Jordan's presence Sofi begins to act out of character, at one point breaking into a nearby home and committing a series of despicable and disgusting acts. There is an unsettling scene where Jordan takes advantage of a needy young woman and talks her into allowing her to cut off her flowing red locks, Brown wielding a pair of scissors with all the malevolence of a slasher villain. It is a display of power on Jordan's part, a reminder to Sofi that she has a way of making women lose a part of themselves in her thrall. Mother Future Self never shifts into full-on horror territory, but it is a thematic cousin of another recent female-centric indie set at a summer camp, Avalon Fast's witchcraft thriller Camp. Both movies are about young women seeking something more from life and falling under the spell of charismatic manipulators.
