SXSW 2025 Reviews: ‘Fantasy Life,’ ‘Slanted,’ ‘Uvalde Mom’
For the third dispatch from the 2025 SXSW Film Festival, we take a look at three films centered around female-led stories, two films in the Narrative Feature Competition at the festival (Fantasy Life, Slanted), as well as a timely, local documentary debuting in the Documentary Spotlight section (Uvalde Mom). From a film about an aging actress wanting to find a connection with someone for the first time in years, to an adolescent going to extreme, life-altering measures to become the prom queen of her high school, to a mother’s determination to save her children and protect her community from the aftermath of a school shooting, these films highlight the variety and importance in telling stories about women from all walks of life.
Fantasy Life (Dir. Matthew Shear)
When we first meet Sam (Matthew Shear), he is a young paralegal working at a small firm in New York City. Stuck mostly in the basement, he’s mostly forgotten about, letting him get through his days quietly; until the day that everyone dreads comes around the corner, and Sam is fired from his position. In his weekly session with his therapist Fred (Judd Hirsch), Sam explains that the recent loss of his job, mixed with his normal issues with the world that cause him to come to theory like his family and Jewish guilt, has caused him to have massive anxiety attacks. Alongside giving him a new set of medication, Fred offers Sam something that goes beyond the doctor-patient relationship; he sets him up with a job as a full time babysitter for his grandchildren, working for his son David (Alessandro Nivola), and daughter-in-law Dianne (Amanda Peet). From the moment Sam steps into the house, the girls are all over him, trying to test their new “manny” with how late they stay up and how much ice cream they can have, but as the film plays out, Sam is able to come into his own as a babysitter and gains the trust of the film. It’s something that is brushed over and forgotten about quickly by Shear, who shifts the focus from Sam to Dianne, and then back to the two of them as they start to grow a bond that has hints of romance, but signals the longing for connection and the idea of not living a lonely life.
Peet’s Dianne, a middle aged actress wanting to recapture the magic of her career from just a few years ago, is easily the best work of her career, providing her character with so much light yet eternalized sorrow that lies on the surface of every moment we see her on screen. For her, this role is a showcase of the best of her abilities as an actress, while also seeming very personal for her, as someone who was once in Dianne’s shoes, at the top of the call sheet, before shifting to motherhood and having Hollywood almost forget that you can be a welcomed, infectious presence on screen. Her chemistry with Shear is very charming, making the film feel at times like a less polished version of a Nancy Meyers’ film (for which Peet has been a part of before the classic Something’s Gotta Give). Nivola, Hirsch, alongside veteran actors Andrea Martin, Bob Balaban, Zosia Mamet, and Holland Taylor, round out a cast that mostly gets a few scenes to play off of Shear and Peet’s characters, but the two leads are the main attraction here and they reason Fantasy Life works as a delightful two-hander about a couple of broken people who learn that help in life comes from those you least expect.
Grade: B
Fantasy Life is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Slanted (Dir. Amy Wang)
Popular; from the moment Joan Huang (Shirley Chen) was a little girl, she wanted to be popular. At an adolescent age, she wandered around her school and saw the local high school committee set up for prom, as they got the crown ready for prom queen. When she saw this, she knew that one day when she was older, she would do everything and anything in her power to make that dream a reality, and in the case of Amy Wang’s debut, Slanted, we see just how dangerously far she is willing to go. As she gets older, we see Joan experience a pretty normal childhood with her best friend Brinda (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), as they navigate their high school as some of the few non white students in their class. Joan’s childhood dream seems like a longshot as she is not popular enough to stand out for prom queen, and has devoted some of her time to her family’s business as her father (Fang Du) is laid off of one of his steady income jobs, forcing him to find some other work and her having to help in his absence. Fed up with her family, and not living up to the cultural standards around her at school, Joan discovers a treatment center in her area that can perform an experimental surgery to change her into the person she wants to be. While she will still be herself consciously, she will become her ideal self, and be able to have a shot at her dream. After her transformation, Joan Huang becomes Jo Hunt (Mckenna Grace), a white teenage girl that becomes instantly popular overnight, at the cost of Joan’s friendship with Brinda, the alienation of her American Chinese heritage and the loss of respect from her parents.
There is no denying that Wang’s directorial debut is an ambitious piece of filmmaking, which led it to win the Grand Jury Award for the Narrative Feature Competition for Best Film. For an independent coming-of-age, body horror thriller, it is unique enough in its vision to stand out in the line-up of films up for the award. Once Joan switches to Jo, that is when the film is at its most interesting, examining the double standard society has for young, minority women as opposed to their white counterparts that are handed more opportunities in life. What defines Joan is not what is on the outside, but what is on the inside, and as Jo, while she gets to carry out her dreams, it is at the cost of creating a nightmare for herself that she comes to regret. Yang’s damnation on the societal definition of what or who is beautiful rings loud and clear throughout the film, but it’s really all that her script has to say, as Slanted does fall victim to feeling like a couple of movies (Carrie, Didi, The Substance, Eighth Grade) that are way too familiar, as well as being more complex overall pieces of cinema. The film is also a victim of what seems to be a running theme with films at SXSW this year, as the ending wraps up way too quickly, and cheapening out on the gory details that could’ve taken this film to a whole other level within the genre that it clearly wants to go to but doesn’t allow itself to commit to getting there. With a couple of good performances from Chen and Grace, Slanted shows the promise of an up-and-coming voice in filmmaking that isn’t able to stick the landing with her debut, but provides a glimpse of a new voice to keep an eye out for over the next couple of years.
Grade: C+
Slanted is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Uvalde Mom (Dir. Anayansi Prado)
On May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, an 18-year old gunman (a former student at the school years before) walked into the school and killed nineteen students and two teachers, injuring seventeen others. At this time, it is the third deadliest school shooting in American History; a sentence that shouldn’t have to be written because the very idea of a school shooting is inhuman and shouldn’t be allowed to happen in any normal society. What is infuriating the most about the Robb Elementary shooting was the lack of care and effort to rescue the kids inside the school on the day of the attack, with over thirty law-enforcement agencies on site, and 376 officers at the school, and it took over an hour to finally put an end to the attack. During this time, parents of the children were screaming, trying to get inside, hoping they could get to their kids; a nightmare scenario no parent should ever have to go through. Officers held back parents from making it into the school, even arresting some and holding them down to the ground; a sick thing that remains haunted in my memory from seeing it on the local news in San Antonio, which is not too far from Uvalde. In Uvalde Mom, we see that one woman was able to make her way into the school, and save her kids from the dangers of the active shooter inside the building. Her name is Angeli Rose Gomez, a farm worker and single mom of two who went viral in a video for chasing in, rescuing her kids, and running from the horrors inside Robb Elementary, to the safety found outside in a parking lot filled with cops.
In director Anayansi Prado’s documentary, we get a full recount of the events of the shooting, as well as an in-depth history to Angeli’s past, where she at one time wanted to become a cop in Uvalde. But those dreams died when she had a minor run in with the law, and now has to fight every day to put food on the table for her kids, not knowing if they are going to make it home from school or not, as the documentary follows their lives six months to a year after the shooting. As we are learning about Angeli and how she has slowly become a voice within the community, the rest of the families and citizens of Uvalde look for accountability as well as changes within not just their town, but the entire state of Texas. For someone that might be an outsider to this community or (like what happens with most mass shootings in the country) has moved on and forgotten about what happens, the film is an effective reminder that this community is still healing but wants to fight to make sure this never happens to their children again. For me, as someone who is local, and has followed this story from the moment the fatal news struck about what happened back in May 2022, the film broke my heart again for everyone in Uvalde. From the mistreatment the police, politicians, and members of the school board have had on the investigation following the attacks, to trying to silence voices like Angeli Rose Gomez for speaking the truth, it showed me the lack of compassion and humanity those in charge of our local and state government have for its citizens, especially if the people affected by this violence are Hispanic or other minority groups, as opposed to predominantly white communities within the same zip code. While Uvalde Mom does end on a hopeful (if rushed) note for Rose Gomez and her family, the fight is still on-going in this small Texas town for justice for all. Only time will tell if everyone will get it, and if that feeling of normalcy will ever return.
Grade: B+
Uvalde Mom is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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