Guillermo Del Toro, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson and Jean-Pierre Jeunet can take a seat. In television writer Bryan Fuller (“Hannibal”), making his feature directorial debut with “Dust Bunny,” we have a similarly accomplished visual stylist displaying compositional mastery that can take years to perfect. His whimsical new family-action-adventure film is a lovingly crafted paean to a child’s imagination and a throwback to the glorious family films of the ’80s. It is also visually dazzling beyond all reason with staggering production design—and is more aesthetically stunning than a picture of this kind has any right to be. Fuller’s fullsome exploitation of the cinematic medium, telling an engrossing story through screen-filling images, is a source of considerable pleasure throughout “Dust Bunny.”
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Little children have always been scared of the monster under their beds. Fuller takes this simple premise and runs with it, privileging 10-year-old Aurora’s (Sophie Sloan) point of view so that we experience her terrors alongside her. Aurora is convinced there is a monster under her bed and that touching the floor at any time will result in the monster eating her whole. To balance the risk, she sometimes sleeps in her fire escape, performs parkour-like gymnastics on the walls and furniture to avoid touching the floor and moves around her house on a giant metal hippopotamus on wheels using a broomstick as an oar.
Curious child that she is, Aurora one night sees a mysterious hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) walking down the street and follows him into the city’s Chinatown. He’s there to perform a hit on a cadre of men doing the dragon dance on Chinese New Year. But we see what Aurora sees—a hero slaying a dragon, his balletic grace interweaving with the fireworks and shadows to create a tapestry of prowess. She follows him home to discover he’s her neighbour. When she determines her parents have been eaten by the monster under her bed, Aurora is forced to take matters into her own hands and hire the hitman to slay the beast. To pay his fee, she does what any reasonable child would—she robs a church!
The tonal tightrope Fuller walks is commendable. He centers Aurora’s concerns and treats her seriously like his protagonist, forcing the audience to take her seriously, too. Though the hitman thinks her story is ridiculous, he is patient, kind, and tries to help a scared child. As he delves deeper into the mystery of her missing parents, he discovers there might be more to Aurora’s tall tales than he imagined.
Right from the first moment, the visual distinctiveness of “Dust Bunny” makes its mark as Fuller has pulled off a coup here. But by some measure, “Dust Bunny” has the widest aspect ratio of any motion picture in recent memory. The film’s aspect ratio is 3:1—think three squares side by side or an entire row of Instagram pictures. This tops the Ultrapanasvision 2.76:1 aspect ratio deployed by Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” earlier this year and Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.”. It is wider than “Ben-Hur” or “How The West Was Won,” and the image resembles a banner or a tapestry, as mentioned above. God knows most directors can’t frame and block a scene to save their life, even for scope today, so for Fuller to compose an entire film in this ultra-wide ratio, and with such a gift for staging and mise-en-scène, is extremely impressive.
It isn’t just the frame that captivates in “Dust Bunny” but what is in the frame. Jeremy Reed’s production design is extraordinary, and countless memorable details fill Fuller’s frame: the wallpaper in Aurora’s lobby and vestibule, the wood paneling next to her door, the banisters and paintings on the stairs, the design of the elevator, the kitchen, the bathroom, Aurora’s blanket and her hippopotamus vehicle, among others. While Aurora’s apartment is the setting for most of “Dust Bunny,” Reed fleshes out several other singular environments—a florist shop, an underground bar, a restaurant next to a shark aquarium—arresting sights all. Fuller’s staging allows audiences to survey his packed frames like frescos or murals.
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Sigourney Weaver amplifies the droll, tongue-in-cheek tone as the hitman’s handler. Looking like a million bucks, Weaver reigns imperiously with her withering delivery, condescension and wit—a veritable action movie Miranda Priestley. The action scenes are also staged cleverly, with several using the environment creatively. One hitman sent to off Auroro dresses up in clothes that match the wallpaper to camouflage himself. Another with ally Sheila Atim and bad guy David Dastmalchian has them playing the adult version of “The Floor Is Lava.”
It is hard to make a film with a child as your lead star, let alone your debut feature, but Fuller pulls it off. Sloan ably carries the picture, growing more confident as “Dust Bunny” progresses. She is not off-puttingly precocious like many child protagonists, but fully retains her child-like qualities even when she engages in adult business. One macabre scene sees her matter-of-factly helping the hitman dispose of a dead body by chopping it into pieces, wrapping it in paper and adding it to a suitcase. Don’t worry; the tone is light, airy, and family-appropriate—God forbid we tickle our kids with something dark and mischievous. The key value here is aesthetic surprise, which kids at an early age can learn to process as something stimulating and pleasurable, as much as sweets or a park swing.
Little more needs to be said about Mikkelsen—one of our great actors and movie stars who can pitch a performance with exactly the right sensibility and treat his tiny co-star as his equal. The real story here is Fuller, though. His camera confidently swoops and zips around Aurora’s apartment. The outdoor scenes have an almost comic book movie quality. He delights in exploring surfaces and textures, often peaking into keyholes, under the floorboards, between mattress strings, and behind mailboxes. Fuller hasn’t directed before, but his filmmaking vision arrives fully-formed and artfully modulated, showing as much interest in persnickety production design and frame composition as Wes Anderson.
“Dust Bunny” is his tribute to the family pictures of older times, when we did not infantilize kids and wish away any wickedness out of this world for them. “Dust Bunny” for its exemplary visual qualities, should be a treat for families when it opens in cinemas later this year. [A]
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