Unicorn Store (2017), by Brie Larson
We all know someone who was an artistic kid — maybe you, who are reading me, were an artistic kid. Yes, that kind of kid who loves glitter, painting, drawing, DIY projects and so on. That kid that started drawing on the bedroom walls, then proceeded to draw on pieces of paper that were proudly displayed by their parents, then moved to art classes and eventually — and obviously — decided to study art at college. And then reality hit, and this kid, now an adult, had to abandon art, forget the childhood dreams and conform to being like everyone else. This happened to so many kids before. And this happened to the lead of “Unicorn Store”, played by Brie Larson, also director and producer.
Kit (Larson) was recently expelled from art school and came back to her parents’ house. Her kind of art was just too childish to be taken seriously by art teachers and connoisseurs. Indeed, she loves to get dirty while painting abstract, über-colorful things, and then she adds a lot of glitter to all her creations. And there is a theme that has been a constant in her art since her childhood: unicorns.
Sad and thinking that her parents consider her a failure, Kit accepts a temporary job in a Public Relations company. Her job is, at first, just to take copies of magazines, but soon her boss Gary (Hamish Linklater) sees potential in her, but he does not do that through a very appropriate behavior.
At the same time, Kit starts receiving weird envelopes, and one of them has a tempting promise: The Store has everything she always wanted. She goes to The Store and there she finds an eccentric salesman (Samuel L. Jackson), who is willing to give her an unicorn, but only if she fulfills some exigencies. So Kit hires Virgil (Mamoudou Athie) to build a stable for her new best friend, and also starts shaking things up in her relationship with her parents and also at work.
Nowadays, more and more adults feel inadequacy to what they are expected to do as adults — and they are willing to confess that they don’t know how “to adult”. Brie Larson’s film, in a certain way, is about this inadequacy. When Kit accepts a normal temporary job, she changes her colorful clothes to a gray suit that belonged to her mother, and enters a work environment that is also gray and serious. She exchanges her creativity for a mechanical job that requires no intelligence. When she tries to shake things up, the childish and colorful in her clashes with the adult and serious work environment — and there is even a very interesting critic to the world of advertisement, in which naked women are the number one choice to sell any products — a world where not always the most creative solution ends up being chosen.
“Unicorn Store” was Brie Larson’s directorial debut. The film, written by Samantha McIntyre, was postponed for many years, and had more than one director and lead attached to it before finally choosing Brie as both the lead actress and the director — she was offered to sit in the director’s chair in 2016, after she won the Oscar for “Room” (2015). There is nothing revolutionary in Brie’s directing, but it was a solid start for her. 2019 has everything to be Brie’s year, in special because of her two films playing Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel — “Captain Marvel” and “Avengers: Endgame”. The fact that Netflix held “Unicorn Store” since 2017, when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, only adds to Brie’s successful year.
Once we get past disbelieving the plot and embark on Kit’s journey, we can find many meanings for the promised unicorn. The unicorn can be the childhood dreams we buried and we need to resurrect so we can find out who we really are. The unicorn can be everything we always wanted, and the exigencies serve to show that our dreams are much easier to accomplish than we think — we just need to shake things up. The unicorn can be our goals, the ones we achieve only if we keep dreaming and keep a little — or a lot — of that childish optimism we once had.
Or maybe, just maybe, there is no hidden message behind “Unicorn Store” and it is just a simple fantasy flick. But, considering all the people who are using social media to tell how much the film affected their lives, we should agree that there is more magic to “Unicorn Store” than a skeptic might find — you know, the kind of magic we only experience when we reconnect to our childhood dreams.
To read the review in Portuguese, click HERE.
