My therapist recently described a certain sect of my family as stuck in an inner drama of excess and deprivation, ricocheting between poles of queasy abundance and harrowing lack. I would describe my family life more as a comedy, but I wrote it down in my notebook anyway. Then, a few days later, I saw Amalia Ulman’s debut film, El Planeta, a self-described “dark comedy about eviction” and, again, I found myself writing down: Excess! Deprivation! It is a film about a mother and daughter, Maria and Leonor, brilliantly played by Ulman’s mother, Ale Ulman, and Ulman herself, as they navigate unexpected poverty after the death of Leonor’s father. Their financial crisis swells and crests, like a wave—they struggle to afford food, their electricity is turned off, they await their…
