'Crystal Fairy': Trippin' through Chile on a quest

'So, Crystal Fairy, why are you naked?" seems a fair enough question, as Gaby Hoffmann - owner of the free-spirit title role in this alternately annoying and fascinating road pic - stands before Michael Cera and a band of Chilean brothers, without clothes, and maybe without a clue.

Crystal Fairy is an improvised, vérité affair by Sebastián Silva, in which Cera - playing Jamie, an obnoxious American visiting Chile - snorts coke, stares at himself in the mirror, and prattles on about Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception. When he makes an offhand invitation to a wifty hippie (yes, Crystal Fairy) to join him and his Chilean buds on a quest for a fabled hallucinogenic cactus, he doesn't think she'll join them.

But she does. Complications, and trippy conversations, ensue.

Shot on the fly, while Silva, Cera & Co. were waiting to make another movie, Crystal Fairy ends up on a beach, and ends up resonating with a pesky charm.

"She's like a lonely tornado," Jamie says of Crystal Fairy, before they embark on their expedition - the goofball blabbermouth waxing poetic and making a donkey of himself all at the same time.

Directed by Sebastián Silva. With Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann, Juan Andrés Silva, José Miguel Silva, and Agustín Silva. In English, and in Spanish with subtitles. Distributed by IFC Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 38 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (drugs, profanity, nudity, adult themes)

Playing at: Ritz BourseEndText