Bernardo Britto’s “Omni Loop” is a science-fiction film driven more by concepts and emotions than hardware or action. It begins by matter-of-factly stating a premise that must be accepted for all the other elements to work: Doctors have diagnosed its heroine Zoya Lowe (Mary-Louise Parker) with a black hole in her chest and that she will die in five days. One consequence of her condition (the only one that matters, in terms of the viewer’s relationship to the film) is that she seems unbound by the usual perception of time as a linear phenomenon, where you know what has already happened to you but you don’t know what hasn’t happened yet. You could even say that her condition approximates the opening sentence of one of the most famous science-fiction novels of all, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Day of Reckoning. Slaughterhouse Five:“Billy Pilgrim is stuck in time.”
The film starts at the beginning, sort of. Zoya, a successful science fiction writer, is in the hospital with her daughter Jayne (Hannah Pearl Utt) and husband Donald (Carlos Jacott), and they are being informed of her condition. There is a terribly funny moment where the hospital staff, who appear in the background of a shot, suddenly erupt into cheers and the doctor sheepishly explains that they are watching an important game that they have been looking forward to. This moment will be repeated as the film unfolds, along with countless other moments, all of which Zoya is aware of, in the tradition of protagonists in other non-linear films that take place in time loops, such as “Groundhog Day,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” as well as non-sci-fi films that are told in a non-linear fashion, such as “All That Jazz,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” and just about anything by Christopher Nolan. Zoya is aware of them because she has been taking a drug that allows her to travel back in time a week, and she has used the drug before. Zoya becomes aware of her situation and strives not only to understand it but to master it, hoping to change what would seem to be an immutable fate: death. The film becomes a kind of buddy movie when Zoya falls in love with a science student named Paula (Ayo Edebiri). from “The Bear”) who hopes can help her out of this mess.
And, as is often the case with these kinds of films, “Omni Loop” is also a way of engaging with the act of watching movies—for the first time, and again and again. There’s a scene in “Groundhog Day” where Bill Murray’s hero, having accepted his predicament, sits calmly in a diner and narrates everything that’s about to happen around him, like a filmmaker calling action on a film set for a take that’s been done so many times that the number on the clapper is double digits. There are moments like that in “Omni Loop,” too, where Aya tells other characters what’s about to happen because it’s already happened, whether it’s a presentation at a medical center or bird droppings falling on a bench.
Come to think of it, one word I used earlier in this article, “unwinds,” is the wrong word. Rather than remove it, I’m leaving it in because it’s evidence of the suggestive nature of this film, which suddenly made me feel self-conscious and wonder why. Here’s why: It’s a 20th-century analog word, redolent of thread, yarn, water hoses, and the like. It comes from a time when movies were mostly shot on film and projected on large reels that fed strips of celluloid through a projector, starting with the head and ending with the tail. Cinema is as linear a medium in terms of its physical characteristics as has ever been seen. “Omni Loop,” as its title attests, is not like that, at all.
There are many moments, especially early in the film (another linear term!), where you can become confused about what you’re watching, what it means, where you are in the story, and what kind of movie you’re watching. But luckily, it also happens to be one of those movies that teaches you how to watch it, and by the end, if you’ve fully engaged with it, you’ll master the language used. Why? Probably because, when you think about it, this kind of storytelling is closer to the way the human mind operates than the kind of storytelling typically practiced in feature films. The editing (by the director, who has his own distinctive editing style that’s nothing like anyone else’s) is so fast, sometimes almost as fast as a flash, that you can feel like you’re inside someone else’s head, not just watching a feature film from a theoretically objective or third-person perspective.
It’s a stunning film that feels much bigger than it is, and while it seems to be straying a bit from its own captivating look and vibe, you don’t mind too much because it’s a seductive, thought-provoking ride with sensitive and surprising performances, especially from Parker.