All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

An old house, a tarot reader, and ghosts of the bride, priest, poet, filmmaker, and musicians, where the ghosts play cards, drink, have sex and help with the fortunetelling business. The happy coexistence of the living and dead world is upset when a mysterious light appears beyond the window…

All the adjectives that describe this film, like fun, moving, and thought provoking, sound trite and worn-out as compared to this film’s freshness. How do you describe a story of a complex friendship with ghosts, one that is neither pop nor pastiche? The film is funny, though without screwball mainstream antics like Whoopi Goldberg rolling her eyes. It is moving for its representation of reality as fantastic, and funeral, not as a creation of the presented world, but as part of so-called reality. It is a film with overwhelming music that makes and supplements the images, as a metaphor of transition suspended between life and death. It is also fun to watch, visually polished. On the plot level, it is thought provoking and wise. Hypnotic hippie-blues sounds (the band Califone and director Tim Rutili play the musicians) balance the film in an esoteric and mystic space and get the audience familiar with (or maybe explain?) the concept of death, time, and emotional relationships that are sometimes bond and other times noose. All of it served up without pretentiousness, with perspective and charming freshness.

Paulina Sieniuć