Bryan Fuller’s sly, darkly amusing fairy-tale “Dust Bunny” is about a 10-year-old girl and her monsters. A watchful child with saucer eyes and a distinctly sober mien, Aurora (Sophie Sloan), lives in New York in a whimsical apartment in an elaborately designed building that looks right out of Gustav Klimt’s imagination. Everything in Aurora’s life looks so perfect, so pretty and obviously appealing — at least if you don’t peek under the bed — from her parents’ smiles to the botanical wallpaper and the illustrated animals on her pink bedroom walls. Yet there’s mystery here, too, and perhaps a very hungry monster lurking in the wait.
In classic once-upon-a-time fashion, the story emerges out of Aurora’s fears — in all their forms — and incorporates archetypes, enchantments and fantastic beings, both human and otherwise. Set in a world that’s both familiar and foreign, it tracks Aurora on an adventure that tests her pluck and resolve as it quickly grows stranger and more threatening. As in many fairy tales, this fantasy gets down to business with brisk efficiency. One minute, Aurora’s parents are smilingly shooing away her worries and the next her world goes kablooey. When she wakes, their room is a wreck and they’ve cryptically disappeared, poof.
With the parents conveniently out of the picture, the story’s other enigmatic pieces swiftly fall into place. Aurora clocks that the neighbor down the hall, a nameless mystery man (a perfect Mads Mikkelsen) may be of interest and perhaps of help. Like Little Red Riding Hood, she slips on a crimson cape and ventures down a path, though this one leads her to Chinatown, where she watches him slay a dragon. She, understandably, refers to him as the Intriguing Neighbor, a description that he fits, from his fighting moves to the tracksuits he wears, both seemingly borrowed from Bruce Lee. The neighbor’s moves and the dead dragon satisfy Aurora’s belief that he’s right for a job she has in mind, which of course proves correct.
Confidently directed by Fuller, a TV veteran making his feature filmmaking debut, “Dust Bunny” is a blast of delightful, visually sumptuous nonsense. Working with a terrific production team — the production designer is Jeremy Reed, the director of photography is Nicole Hirsch Whitaker — he has created a intricately detailed, hermetic world where the dividing line between illusion and reality never stays in one place. (Shot in Budapest, Hungary, the movie makes great use of some of its attractions, including a stunning Art Nouveau confection by the architect Odon Lechner that serves as Aurora’s building.)
To help build the tension, Fuller plays with the story’s unreality, even while he emotionally grounds the characters, Aurora in particular. She may be a fairy-tale innocent swept up in weird, dangerous doings or just an ordinary unreliable narrator, or perhaps both. When she watches the Intriguing Neighbor slay the dragon, does he really spin through the air like a top as he fights? Was there even a dragon? What Fuller doesn’t toy with is Aurora’s integrity. She’s a peculiar, distinctive kid and her monster may be her invention, but her emotions are viscerally believable. Fuller takes her seriously, and you do too, which intensifies your investment. This is a fantasy but, as he reminds you, it’s also a story about a frightened child.
As the story develops, Aurora and the Intriguing Neighbor bond, settling into a tentative father-and-daughter relationship that is a staple in so many fairy tales. (Fuller created the TV show, “Hannibal,” in which Mikkelsen played the title character.) Mikkelsen has a great deadpan, and he uses it here like a mask, one that he initially uses to obscure the Intriguing Neighbor’s interiority before letting it gradually slip. There turns out to be more to him than Aurora knows, including his relationship with Laverne (Sigourney Weaver), a fixer with refined manners and a wolfish smile so large she looks like she could easily swallow Aurora whole. Laverne is a pungent, terrifying creature, and Weaver plays her with lusty verve.
One of the pleasures of “Dust Bunny” is that for all its dark corners, its looming shadows and violently descending multitudes — enter David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, among others — it retains a sense of wonder, including about the world and other people. Terrible, awful, scary things happen, yes, but while life can be a phantasmagoric (or banal) nightmare, it is also filled with marvels, sumptuous beauty and eccentric charms, like the neighbor’s hen-shaped lamp that’s laying a lightbulb egg. At times, it can seem that Fuller is about to lose himself in the movie’s filigreed details, its curlicue lines, lush flowers and confectionary rest. In truth, I think he’s is sharing his delight in the imaginative possibilities of storytelling and in the plasticity of the medium itself, which is as infectious as it is welcome.
Dust Bunny Rated R for gun, knife and big-teeth violence. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.
Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times.
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