SXSW Film Review: Omni Loop

Diagnosed with a black hole growing in her chest, Zoya Lowe has only a week left to live. But when her inevitable end comes, she wakes up back in the hospital. Stuck in a quantum loop, Zoya relives her dying days, over and over, eternally on death’s doorstep.

Omni Loop, written and directed by Bernardo Britto (2016’s Jacqueline Argentine), begins as a straightforward science fiction, another entry in the crowded subgenre of time loop tales (see Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day, Palm Springs). But, like the warping of the cosmos, Britto’s second feature film transforms into something else entirely, bending to the gravity of the situation. It’s not long before Zoya (a spectacular Mary-Louise Parker), free from the limitations of time, realizes sincere truths about past lives, sacrifice, and her place in the universe.

“You’re going to do incredible things one day,” an offscreen narrator tells young Zoya at the start of the movie. “You’re going to change the world.” Now in her fifties, Zoya carries a quiet resentment. Her career as a science textbook writer is dull and unfulfilling, worsened by the fact that she was once a renowned physicist. She gave up on that path decades ago, choosing instead to get married and raise a daughter. In her infinite final week, Zoya’s melancholy turns to frustration, and when she finally breaks her routine, as if by fate, she bumps into Paula (Ayo Edebiri), a student who just so happens to be reading Zoya’s own book on quantum mechanics. Together, the two embark to “solve time travel” and send Zoya back to the life she could have pursued before settling.

In casting Emmy award winners Parker (HBO’s Angels in America) and Edebiri (FX on Hulu’s The Bear), Omni Loop captures lightning in a bottle: two generations of outstanding actresses delivering pensive, soul-stirring performances. As character foils – Edebiri’s Paula resembling the plucky young academic Parker’s Zoya once strived to be – the two complement one another with grace and an understated sense of humor. One standout scene in the second act finds the pair opposite each other, revealing their past choices, contemplating the ramifications of them, and moving the audience to tears in the process.

Simultaneously ripping and repairing the proverbial heartstrings, Britto’s sci-fi drama is truly life-affirming. For those that constantly question the long-term impact of major decisions – which is to say, anyone with a pulse – Omni Loop interrogates the very endeavor as potentially futile. For to even probe what could have been is to ignore what makes life worth living: the relationships right in front of us, eternally present.

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Omni Loop

Narrative Spotlight, World Premiere

Thursday, March 14, 5:45pm, ZACH Theatre

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