As anyone who has made a great-author biopic (or even watched one, for that matter) can tell you, writing is among the hardest professions to make cinematic. The slow churn of ideas, the second-guessing and self-editing, and even those rare, exhilarating surges of creative flow are all part of a stubbornly interior, usually static process. Small wonder, then, that writer’s block is an eternally popular subject for doubtless empathetic, readily self-distracting screenwriters: Dramatic possibilities open up considerably when a character is doing something, anything, other than what they’re supposed to be doing. Yet in “Agata the Writer” — an elegant, slippery slip of a film about writing, yes, but also about immigrant identity, trauma tourism, vulgar art, theft of property and history, and strange, dissonant homecomings away from home — those possibilities also wind up perversely misbehaving.
A debut of impressive poise and confidently willful storytelling instincts from video artist Kuba Dorabialski, “Agata the Writer” also marks a welcome return to substantial film roles for the ever-interesting, ever-quizzical Australian actress Mia Wasikowska — who, the last time we saw her in something of this approximate register, was a malleable figment of a writer’s imagination in Mia Hansen-Løve’s similarly meta but far breezier “Bergman Island.” As reference points go, however, this year’s gorgeous Canadian Oscar submission “Nina Roza” feels more tonally and thematically complementary.
