First Person Plural (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: whenever anyone mentions vacation or a vacation destination
Take a Drink: whenever anyone touches something a bit too long
Take a Drink: whenever anyone mentions an illness or injury
Do a Shot: for references to jewelry
By: Henry J. Fromage (Four Beers) –
Sometimes you watch an entire film and you feel no closer to understanding it when it ends as when it begun. When, say, it’s David Lynch we’re talking about, that can be a thrilling and uncanny experience. There aren’t a lot of David Lynches out there.
First Person Plural is a Portuguese film about a family preparing to go on vacation, who have some, let’s say adverse reactions to the immunizations they need to go to the tropics. At least, that’s the synopsis.
A Toast
Right from his bizarre yet stylish home invasion opening dripping with a delicious feeling of just not-rightness, it’s clear director Sandro Aguilar knows exactly the aesthetic he’s after, and damn him if he’ll depart from it for even a second. The absolute immersion in oddity never lets up, and his cast is fully committed to it.
It absolutely is not going to be for everyone, but if you surrender yourself to its unique rhythms, it becomes punchdrunk funny after awhile. I a laughed out loud quite a few times, genuine belly laughs, and they were definitely with, not at, the film.
Beer Two
The sooner you come to terms with the fact every character is going to act like they’re high the entire film, the better off you’ll be.
Beer Three
It’s a shroom high, an everyone feels weiirrrrdd man high, the kind of high where people talk past each other and things that aren’t funny are and vice-versa. A high where a hand exploring a novel texture, or sporadic bursts of involuntary sound are the entire point of a scene.
Beer Four
So what’s the overall point, exactly? Is this a satire of meaningless suburban existence, of the innate silliness of first world problems? Then why set it sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, when something more contemporary would assuredly be more cutting? And why is there so much of it (if ever a film was fine to clock in under 90 minutes, it’d be this one)?
Verdict
First Person Plural is an assured and artful directorial vision the likes of which you have not seen before, possibly for good reason.
