O’Dessa – a weird, colorful rock opera with a star-making turn from Sadie Sink

I cannot imagine that O’Dessa is going to be a popular or well-loved film, but I can imagine that in a few years it will find its audience, and perhaps a boutique blu-ray release stacked with the special features I currently crave. It’s been a while since I felt comfortable saying that a film has the potential to become a cult classic, largely because such things can never really be predicted, but I feel okay about it in this case. Rock operas almost never succeed right out of the gate, but pretty much all of them end up finding their audience with time, especially when they’re big and earnest and kinda dopey (I’m looking at you, Phantom of the Paradise, you masterpiece). 

I am pleased to report that O’Dessa is big and weird and kinda dopey … and I loved every minute of it. 

Sadie Sink plays our titular hero with a star-making gusto, while writer/dorector Geremy Jasper (Patti Cake$) secures his name as a truly original visual auteur by proffering a uniquely beautiful take on the post-apocalyptic fairy tale. All of the hallmarks of such a thing are there, from neon-coated criminal empires to fictional designer drugs to prostitutes with a heart of gold, but with the addition of a novel visual aesthetic that exists somewhere between Kung Fury, Blade Runner, Johnny Mnemonic, and the blacklight gang from Batman Forever. 

Our heroine is a young musician whose father (Pokey LaFarge), a self-proclaimed rambler, died long ago, leaving her alone with her ailing mother (Bree Elrod). Before long, O’Dessa is an orphan, and instead of staying on her mother’s failing farm, she torches it, grabs her father’s legendary guitar, and hits the road. Like her ancestors before her, O’Dessa wishes to be a rambler, and to bring joy to the world through music. 

Along the way her instrument is swiped by a band of ne’er-do-wells and sold to a pawn shop in Satylite City, a colorful den of sin that exists under the thumb of leader and entertainment icon Plutonovich (Murray Bartlett). Plutonovich holds all the Plazma (a stand-in for oil), and ships any dissenters to his rule off to Onederland, a remote island where prisoners are brutalized for the entertainment of the masses. O’Dessa must work amidst the street people, including imprisoned sex worker Euro Dervish (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), to reunite with her instrument and stand proud in a world determined to keep everyone but the elite down (sound familiar?). 

It’s a lot of material for what is ultimately a straightforward fable that you’ve seen plenty of times before, but what gives O’Dessa its entertainment value is they way it retools standard post-apocalyptic/“fight the power” themes for a modern audience. First and foremost, it’s not really a rock opera so much as it’s a folk opera, and secondly, the romance at its center is queer-coded in a unique way. It’s hard to describe but even though it’s between a man and a woman, there’s a tweak to the gender norms inside of the coupling that strongly suggests that neither of our heroes are so simply categorizable as straight. Some may say it’s a cop out, but many of the Letterboxd reviews I’ve read have featured some version of “I don’t believe that these two obviously gay people are together,” which I think is the intended response. It’s not supposed to be gay or straight or any sort of easy defined thing. It’s just meant to be love. It’s progressive in its own way. 

But I digress. 

Jasper’s use of music rides the line between diegetic tunes and an outright musical, successfully delivering the best of both worlds. Every song is indeed performed within the narrative of the film, but is heightened by added audio production and visual flare. The suggestion is that while O’Dessa is playing her guitar alone on the boardwalk, the effect of her music is one that brings any passersby into her heightened musical world. And since the whole idea is that she and her music are prophesied to begin a revolution, it makes sense that such a hypnotism would occur. 

Yes, it’s broad, and as previously mentioned, kinda dopey. But it’s a result of earnestness rather than sloppiness. Maybe I’m a sucker — a hopeless romantic, to a degree — and perhaps something about the current state of the world has me hankering for any sort of story about protest and hope. All of the above, really. 

Chances are quite high that you’re not going to care for this movie. 

…but then a few days later Onederworld or Ramblin’ Down the Road will pop into your head. Your toe will start tapping. And in 15 years you’ll be telling a group of costumed teens en route to a midnight screening that you were there when this colorful rocker first came out. 

Directed by Geremy Jasper

Written by Geremy Jasper

Starring Sadie Sink, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Regina Hall, Murray Bartlett

Rated PG-13, 106 minutes

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