Name: Viena and the Fantomes
Genre: Romance, Drama, Music
Released: 2020-06-30T00:00:00+00:00
Cast: Dakota Fanning, Jeremy Allen White, Caleb Landry Jones, Frank Dillane, Zoë Kravitz

The opening shot of Viena and the Fantomes is a close-up of Dakota Fanning’s face, smeared with grease paint, her eyes wide and unblinking as she watches the chaos of the band’s performance. It’s an arresting image, one that promises intimacy and grit. But this promise quickly unravels into something far less compelling.

Gerardo Naranjo’s film, his English-language debut, follows Viena (Fanning), a roadie for the Fantomes, a post-punk band touring the American West in the 1980s. The setup is ripe with potential—road movies thrive on tension and transformation, and the punk aesthetic offers a visceral counterpoint to the emotional stakes of Viena’s love triangle with Freddy (Jeremy Allen White), the band’s drummer, and Keyes (Frank Dillane), a British crew member. Yet Viena and the Fantomes stumbles in its execution, failing to capitalize on its strongest elements.

The film’s greatest strength lies in its aesthetic. Emilio’s attractively grimy photography captures the raw energy of the punk scene, with dimly lit clubs and the gritty texture of life on the road. The dreamlike quality of the band’s never-ending tour is reinforced by the nonlinear storytelling, which blurs time and place in a way that mirrors Viena’s disorientation. This visual style is compelling, but it’s often undercut by a script that struggles to balance its psychological horror elements with its romantic drama.

The performances are another bright spot. Fanning delivers a nuanced portrayal of Viena, conveying her character’s quiet resilience and vulnerability without relying on overt emotional displays. White and Dillane also bring depth to their roles, but the characters they play—Freddy and Keyes—are so poorly written that even their strong performances can’t save them. The Fantomes themselves are a disappointment; as one critic noted, they’re “nasty, trivial, and boring,” and their music feels like little more than background noise.

The film’s structure is its downfall. For the first hour and 45 minutes, Viena and the Fantomes plods along, mired in meandering scenes that fail to advance the plot or deepen our understanding of the characters. The pacing is glacial, and the lack of momentum makes it difficult to care about Viena’s predicament. Then, in a sudden pivot, the final 15 minutes become outright risible, veering into tonal territory that feels disconnected from the rest of the film.

The love triangle at the heart of the story never generates the tension or emotional resonance it should. The relationships feel artificial, and the stakes are unclear. Viena’s internal conflict is never fully explored, leaving her choices—when she finally makes them—feeling arbitrary rather than earned.

Viena and the Fantomes had the potential to be a gripping exploration of ambition, love, and self-discovery set against the backdrop of the punk scene. But Naranjo’s film gets lost in its own aesthetic, failing to deliver on the emotional or narrative front.