Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy is a co-production between two countries that don’t exist anymore, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. That somehow feels appropriate for this movie. If I had watched it for a film class paper, the paper would have been about duality. Art versus commerce. Sex versus domesticity. Support for traditional occupation versus support for artistic career. It probably would have been a solid B+ paper.
Robert is working on his science fiction novel, while enduring constant interruptions — a neighbor with a dog, the neighbor’s son Tony, his girlfriend Biba. No one will give him the space he needs to write his tale about the android Andra and her young charges, the children Targo and Ulu. They come to Earth from the Arkana Galaxy.
In a bookstore, one of Robert’s colleagues recommends that he add a monster to his story. The most popular science fiction novels all have monsters in them. Robert decides to cut Targo from his novel and instead write in a monstrous pet.
That night, Robert hears a strange voice on a radio that calls him to a nearby island. It is the voice of Andra! He meets Andra, Ulu, and Targo … and also Targo’s pet Mumu, which can either be a small toy or a human-size monster. Targo knows that Robert tried to write him out of existence, and is a brat about it.
Robert doesn’t believe what he has experienced. He goes to see a psychiatrist. He tells the psychiatrist about how his mother died when he was younger, and as a baby, he caused his father to grow lactating breasts so that he could be nursed. The psychiatrist concludes that Robert is probably sane.
The next time Robert visits the aliens, he brings Biba. Robert accidentally destroys the spaceship, so Andra uses her navel to reverse time. Robert doesn’t destroy the ship the second time, but Biba freaks out, and so Andra turns her into a small cube.
When Robert returns to the dock without Biba, her older sister is furious with him. He tries to explain about the cube, and she knocks it into the ocean.
With the help of a diver, Robert is able to retrieve the cube, and Biba is returned to her humanoid form. This is good, as her cousin is getting married. Here is another dichotomy in the movie between her older, protective, suspicious sister and her younger, carefree sister, who literally steps out of the shower bopping along to music on headphones.
Townsfolk get wind of the aliens, and go to search them out in the caves on the island. One of them decides that in order to show good will to the aliens, they should show that they are not hiding anything. So the entire crowd of 20+ people take off all their clothes and go hunting through the cave … but the aliens have vanished.
They vanished to Robert’s apartment. Andra cleans for Robert. She cooks him a steak. He hears music when they touch. This is not a metaphor, but a literal thing — they make beautiful music together. And that’s the point when Biba walks in. Biba loses her temper, and strips naked at Andra. Can Andra offer Robert any of this eroticism? She cannot! Robert attempts to send Andra and the twins away psychically, but he cannot. Biba is still furious, gets dressed, and storms out.
In the emotional mayhem, Targo slips Mumu into Biba’s bag. Mumu grows to its monstrous form in Biba’s family’s apartment, spews goo all over Biba and her older sister, then walks downstairs. There is an amazing ten minute sequence when Mumu attacks Biba’s cousin’s wedding dinner as the guests alternately try to kill it and communicate with it. Heads are pulled off, guns are fired, a parrot says “Welcome,” plates are moved out of the way because they’re borrowed, the whole thing ends in flames, and Biba’s blind grandfather plays the accordion throughout.
When Robert finds out about this, he goes to Andra, who uses her navel to reverse time to the point where Biba comes into Robert’s apartment. But instead of catching Robert and Andra touching, Biba walks in to see the spaceship flying out of the window, as Robert leaves with Andra, the twins, and Mumu … to see the Arkana Galaxy. On his way off Earth, Robert works on his novel. Biba radios him to ask if he will be back for dinner.
The movie’s vibe is pure Stanislaw Lem, slow in places, yet unexpectedly entertaining in its weirdness. The monstrous form of Mumu is animated by Jan Svankmajer. This is not a CMP film, and I would definitely be willing to watch it again.