Forever Your Maternal Animal
(Siempre soy tu animal materno)
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.
