Oscillating abruptly and often painfully between conflicting states of adolescence and adulthood, Eva (Daniela Marin Navarro), the teenaged protagonist of Valentina Maurel’s I Have Electric Dreams, seems acutely uncomfortable within her own skin. While, on the one hand, this makes her arguably like just about any other 16-year-old—i.e., a boiling cauldron full of warring hormones, unmanageable emotions, and irrational impulses—at times she seems to represent such an extreme case that it can feel like Maurel is just a few steps away from adopting the more visceral tactics of body horror. However, the director also makes it abundantly clear, from the mixture of curiosity, loathing, desire, and disgust with which Eva regards her own physicality, that even ostensibly ordinary bodies don’t need any extra goop to seem alien or monstrous. Her…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 93 - Winter 2023