DAN WEBSTER:
Imagine if you were to wake up every morning in a rented room to the sound of Sonny and Cher singing their trademark tune “I Got You Babe.” And now imagine every morning is the exact same morning. Yes, that’s what happens to weathercaster Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) in Harold Ramis’ 1993 comedy Groundhog Day.
It’s somewhat the same situation facing Zoya Lowe (played by Mary-Louise Parker) in Omni Loop, a film written and directed by Brazilian-born filmmaker Bernardo Britto. There are, however, differences. Zoya, too, wakes up repeatedly in the same situation. But she finds herself in a hospital bed. And it isn’t the same morning but as much as a week earlier.
Furthermore, Zoya isn’t an arrogant, self-absorbed would-be celebrity but a married woman and mother whose life has gone in a direction she didn’t expect but has never seriously regretted. Until now.
Because now she is dying. And not dying in any way that could be considered normal, unless—like writer-director Britto—you’re willing to delve into a realm that can be described only as a cross between family drama and sci-fi fantasy: Zoya is dying because she has a black hole in the middle of her chest.
Yes, a black hole, something that NASA describes as “an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.” We discover this early on, when a doctor explains to Zoya’s loving daughter Jayne (played by Hannah Pearl Utt) and Zoya’s equally devoted husband Donald (played by Carlos Jacott) that there is no cure for such a condition—and that Zoya has maybe a week to live.
So, when it becomes clear just what is killing Zoya, it’s not that much of a stretch to accept the possibility that she can travel in time, too. And combining the theme of sci-fi fantasy with the story of a woman looking back at the decisions she has made in her life, Omni Loop—which cleverly borrows as a title part of Miami Florida’s transit system—also bears a resemblance to last year’s multi-Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once.
In Zoya’s case, her condition causes her to recall her undergraduate research, which involved—naturally enough—the study of time. As she repeatedly lives out her final week, a nosebleed signals that it’s time to take one of the pills that will magically transport her back to the hospital—but with her daughter’s face confronting her instead of the sounds of Sonny and Cher. And finally, one day, she is spurred to investigate why and how this is all happening.
As with so much that takes places in Zoya’s life—as well as all our lives, actually—what motivates her is a chance encounter. For Zoya, that means meeting a young woman, Paula (played by Ayo Edebiri), who happens to be carrying a copy of a physics textbook that Zoya co-authored with her husband.
From there Zoya has to convince Paula that her situation—involving the black hole, her imminent death, not to mention the ability she has to time travel—is not just the ravings of a mad woman. Furthermore, Paula, who works in a college laboratory, should help her find the solution to… well, everything.
And there are so many questions to answer. Not just about the riddle of time but of Zoya herself, of how the death of her father at a young age marked her, how the pills just showed up one day accompanied by a voice that told her she was bound “to do incredible things,” how she quit her studies and opted for another kind of life completely.
Their search takes place over untold eons of time, though it seems to us to go by quickly. And, like Phil Connors, she relives the same situations over and again. Yet while Britto does add touches of humor, overall Omni Loop is a thoughtful if more solemn study of all the various ways that life can unfold—and how the decisions we make affect us in ways impossible to foretell.
Not all of Britto’s plot points tie up neatly, or even get answered at all. Yet, no matter. Veteran Parker and new star Edebiri (from the acclaimed HBO miniseries The Bear) embody enough of a strong team presence that, combined with Britto’s imagination, they make his point clear: the past is over, the future is unknown, and all that really matters is the here and now.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.