Alia Shawkat in Luca Guadagnino-Produced Satire

Atropia, Hailey Gates’ scattered debut feature, is based on a city invented by the American military to train cadets. That the United States erects role-playing facilities tasked with strengthening combat operations — at home or abroad — isn’t surprising. In her riveting archival documentary Riotsville, USA, Sierra Pettengill explores fictional towns built by the military in the 1960s to teach domestic police anti-riot techniques in hopes of quelling protest movements. Since 9/11, U.S. war spending has ballooned to the trillions, with billions earmarked for overseas action as well as homeland security. 

War remains one of this nation’s most profitable exports, and in Atropia, which premiered at Sundance, Gates attempts to satirize the goings-on at this role-playing facility through the eyes of Fayruz (an excellent Alia Shawkat), an aspiring actress who rotates between roles like Iraqi street vendor and — in more exciting weeks — mustard gas scientist. The film expands on Gates’ assured short Shako Mako, which observes a similar character (also played by Shawkat) plotting her escape from a simulated war zone at an army base camp by secretly recording audition tapes for casting agents.

In Atropia, Gates, who also wrote the screenplay, includes a hampering romantic thread between our aspiring actress and a soldier cast as an Atropian insurgent (Callum Turner). Their love story adds a sentimental layer that, in competing for narrative space, dilutes this send-up of American imperialism. 

The most fascinating elements of Atropia expose another layer of the military-entertainment complex, the mutually beneficial relationship between the film industry and the U.S. Department of Defense. It’s a well-documented fact that filmmakers who gain access to military sites, equipment or information usually submit scripts for vetting. Through observing how actors, makeup artists, set and prop designers make a living by working in this 24/7 simulation, Gates shows the ease with which ordinary people contribute to the nation’s war machine. One wishes that the director had used this thread to comment more forcefully or even satirically on this striking relationship between the military and Hollywood. 

We meet Fayruz in the midst of a simulation gone wrong. A bomb strapped to a donkey didn’t detonate as it should have, prompting the soldiers and a group of underpaid actors to reset the scene. For the most part, working at Atropia inspires the same grievances as most jobs. Gates, with cinematographer Eric K. Yue, shoots scenes after that initial role-play like a workplace comedy, taking care to detail the architectural elements of Atropia (production design by Ashley and Megan Fenton) alongside its operations, from the control room to prop studios. Atropia has everything, from its own customary clothing (costuming by Angelina Vitto) and currency to a bartering system and news channels (“Box News” for Americans, “Al Jazzer,” for the vaguely MENA-coded Atropians). Watching the whole simulation from their cushy office are two military managers played by Tim Heidecker and Chloë Sevigny in strong but too-brief turns. 

Every office has a striver and in Atropia it’s Fayruz, who takes her roles seriously and makes an effort to help her colleagues, like Maria (Shaholly Ayers), prepare by connecting to the background of their characters. Most of her coworkers, like Noor (Zahra Alzubaidi), don’t care and correctly point out that they are merely window dressing for military training. Still, Fayruz persists, and when she hears that a famous star will be visiting their “set,” she manipulates the simulation to maximize her stage time.

This could be her chance to get cast in a real role. Shawkat’s spry comedic timing works well at the beginning of Atropia; the actress is clearly having fun playing an aspiring star, cheerleading her teammates to mask her own competitive edge. But Fayruz’s motivations for taking all of this so seriously remain slightly too opaque, considering that she herself is Iraqi and her family disapproves.

Although her plan to impress the famous actor fails, Fayruz meets Abu Dice (Turner), a private who just returned from a tour in Iraq and is now training at Atropia, through the process. Their relationship starts on an odd and somewhat humorous note before settling into typical rom-com beats. Shawkat and Turner, who both starred in Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room, reunite here as unlikely lovers. Their relationship teeters somewhere between authentic connection and — because this is all happening in a simulation — heightened performance. Genuine chemistry between the two performers helps carry these scenes, which can seem tonally disparate from Atropia’s more farcical elements. In intimate moments with Fayruz, Dice often has flashbacks to his tour in Iraq, and here Gates intersperses documentary footage of soldiers. The shift between these sobering images and the screwball comedy can be jarring. 

As Abu Dice and Fayruz’s lust intensifies, Atropia’s military complex send-up takes a backseat to their narrative. The comedy that does remain doesn’t always land, and the promised satire becomes a repetitive collection of indiscriminately aimed jokes (more often at the expense of the Atropians). Gates offers an incredibly compelling premise, shedding light on the scale of military propaganda in the United States, but in taking on so much, her film ends up not saying enough.