Musica - Review

Rating: 4 out of 5

Written, directed and starring Rudy Mancuso, Musica is a charming and endlessly creative romantic comedy that gleefully serves as so much more.

In part semi-autobiographical, the film chronicles the coming-of-age story of Rudy, a young man with synesthesia, who is approaching a crossroads in his life.

Freshly dumped by his college girlfriend, and struggling to realise his dreams of becoming a composer and puppeteer while also navigating college life and a domineering Brazilian mother, Rudy is suddenly offered a chance to find fresh focus by embarking on a new relationship with the charming Isabella (Camila Mendes). But the path to true love does not run smooth.

While existing within rom-com conventions, Musica also strives to be different too. It is filled with visual representations of Rudy’s synesthesia (a neurological condition in which information meant to stimulate one of your senses stimulates several of your senses), which inject proceedings with a distinct style and energy. An early sequence inside a restaurant/diner finds Rudy struggling to pay attention to what his girlfriend is saying, while simultaneously arranging the sounds that he hears around him into a percussion arrangement involving rhythms and dancing. It is visually arresting and immediately imbues Musica with its own identity.

It's a trick that Mancuso manages to repeat throughout, which brilliantly offers an insight into a condition that might otherwise have been difficult to fully appreciate - but which also contributes to the film's ability to raise awareness - and which ultimately makes it more endearing.

Notable, too, are the ways in which Mancuso also manages to embrace Brazilian culture, which also sets the film apart from many of its rom-com peers, as well as the fact that it's as much a tale of overcoming adversity as it is anything overtly genre obsessed.

Visually, too, the film never rests on its laurels, always finding ways to offer a different perspective and surprise. One scene, in particular, that finds Rudy drifting between various relationships in a single take, feels reminiscent of Wes Anderson (in its use of sets), as well as bold and adventurous in its own right.

But then even when embracing more standard genre tropes, Musica is shot through with charm - most notably in its performances, with Mancuso and Mendes proving an irresistible couple. 

It's a film to be consistently dazzled and impressed by - and one which marks the arrival of a major new talent in Mancuso.