EIFF 2025: After this Death
Lucio Castro’s romantic and beguiling second feature concerns the cosmic connection between a pregnant voiceover artist and an enigmatic rock star who goes missing
The title of the second feature from talented Argentine director Lucia Castro is pretty instructive. It braces you for a work dealing with loss and grief, and certainly death and its aftermath take many forms in After this Death. It’s also a film celebrating life and love, though. Like Castro’s wonderful debut, the Barcelona-set gay romance End of the Century, After this Death takes an almost cosmic approach to the relationship at its centre between Isabel (Mía Maestro), an Argentine voiceover artist, and Elliott (Lee Pace), the frontman for an avant-garde rock band with an obsessive cult following.
The film begins with Isabel, who’s pregnant, taking a stroll through an autumnal forest somewhere in upstate New York. The world of fairy tale is invoked from the off and heightened by the arrival of Elliott, who has a bit of the big bad wolf about him. They meet in a cave, and what ensues is one of the most beguiling meet-cutes (or more accurately, meet-weirds) in recent memory. Elliott tries to leave Isabel his number surreptitiously, but the two eventually meet again when it turns out Isabel’s best friend, a rock critic, delightfully played by Gwendoline Christie, invites Isabel to one of Elliott’s gigs. It’s the first of several moments of kismet, seemingly pulling the pair together.
Pace and Maestro crackle on screen. The former makes for a convincing rock god, given that he remains devastatingly sexy even while spouting nonsense lyrics as part of his pretentious band, Likeliness Increases. Maestro matches his charisma and presents us with a character who’s constantly surprising us with her wants and desires, and maybe even surprising herself. Both characters meet amid creation – Isabel is creating life, Elliott is giving birth to his 11th and final album – and there’s an increasing sense that these two puzzling characters fit together perfectly.
A passionate affair full of frank sex begins, but less candid are the discussions of each other’s past. Elliott is a particular mystery. “Don’t know me too well, too soon,” he warns Isabel. How could she when he’s withholding so many revelations, both small (he claims to have no cat but owns a cat activity tower) and big (is his bandmate his brother or his lover)? Tragedy then strikes and breaks the lovers apart, but fate intervenes again to reunite them, spiritually if not figuratively, when Elliott goes missing.
At this point, Castro's already dreamy film takes a turn for the Lynchian. Cosmic romance slips into psychological horror as Elliott’s fans turn on Isabel for answers about the whereabouts of Elliott and his unreleased album, but like the frontman they adore, they’re a cryptic bunch, only communicating with her through creepy singing telegrams and disturbing pranks.
After this Death confirms Castro as a deeply cinematic filmmaker. The faintly menacing camerawork from cinematographer Barton Cortright clues us in to the mood of paranoia long before it erupts in the second half, and like with End of the Century, Castro demonstrates a deft command of tone as the atmosphere shifts imperceptibly from realism to something more off-kilter. This dazzling meditation on death, desire and toxic fandom doesn’t offer up its answers freely. Castro leaves many gaps in this puzzle, perhaps too many to piece together, but like the avant-garde poetics of Elliott’s music, this mystery casts an intoxicating spell.
After this Death had its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival