Whatever farcical overtones the title of Francisca Alegría’s debut feature might suggest, The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future is a richly layered fable bursting with mystery and secrets. From its opening moments, cryptic messages flow from chant-like songs as we explore a river plagued by dead fish. From somewhere beneath this ruin, a young woman (Mía Maestro) wearing leather and carrying a motorcycle helmet surfaces, gasping for air. Soaking wet, she makes her way into town where she is spotted through a window by an aged man (Alfredo Castro) who appears to know her. After calling out the name “Magdalena,” the man promptly has a heart attack and falls to the ground.
And thus begins the enigma of The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future. What follows is a small-scale story about a family coming to terms with its dysfunction through a series of puzzling encounters with the past, wrapped up in a large-scale comment on ecological disaster and corporate environmental responsibility. As the riddle of who the woman in the river is and how she got there unfolds, it becomes clear that her past is inextricably entwined with not only the unaddressed grief and trauma of those around her, but the surroundings from which she emerged.
Alegría continually keeps her story’s secrets closely guarded, offering only incremental hints at the truth via surreal visions and cleverly-placed moments of guilt-ridden emotional projection. While this method doesn’t always provide clear-cut answers, it does fantastically enhance the mystery by keeping things almost irresistibly dreamlike and esoteric. Perhaps most interesting, though, is that Alegría has crafted her film so that interpretations of it will likely differ from viewer to viewer. The solution to The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future might not be an obvious one, but it’s certainly worth exploring all the same.
Originally published by ASHEVILLE MOVIES.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.