Lady Mushroom's Lover

Lady Mushroom’s Lover, the latest short offering from experimental Russian filmmaker Diana Galimzyanova, tells the story of a wealthy humanoid mushroom heiress under increasing pressure from her affluent parents to marry, and to marry well. However, Lady Mushroom’s heart and affections are instead captured by a man of much lower status, the charming John, who we soon find out has secret machinations of his own.

Purveyors of Galimzyanova’s previous works will no doubt be aware of the highly experimental approach this imaginative writer/director likes to employ in their storytelling. This time, with the help of and openly crediting ChatGPT as their co-writer, Galimzyanova looks to push the limits and showcase the advances of artificial intelligence and its applications towards filmmaking, blending neural-network AI models with live-action filming. The findings? There is still a long way to go.

For aficionados of the weird and wonderful side of cinema, Lady Mushroom’s Lover could be something to admire. Points can be scored here for its attempts to do something bold and unique, and Galimzyanova is no stranger to finding new and interesting ways to tell a story, as evident in the likes of Murder Girl: A True Story or You Turn Me into a Monster. But this short lacks any of the provocative edge or purpose of those previous works, and for those who are more into the art of storytelling, the film will likely just infuriate them instead.

The story itself is unoriginal, which would be fine if the film made any real attempt to reimagine its well-worn plot in some way. But even with its crazy, fungal premise, that effort is completely missing. It never seems to know what setting it wants to play in, and the performances of its two live leads do little to add any positives either, never managing to match the emotion or drama each scene needed to bring the film alive.

The movie's biggest letdown, though, is unfortunately the very thing it's trying to put front and centre: the generative AI sequences. The barrage of increasingly dizzying and incoherent visuals is a constant, jarring distraction, too disjointed and mismatched against the live action, meaning the whole thing simply doesn't work. While it might be a success if the aim was simply to prompt an AI model and see what it spits out, it fails as a coherent, storytelling project.

Despite undeniably offering up something you've never seen before, with a story that lacks any kind of intrigue or originality, performances that lack passion and commitment, and a jarring use of AI that lacks any kind of cohesion, Lady Mushroom’s Lover falls quite short of the mark.