‘Agata the Writer’ Review: Mia Wasikowska in a Sly Debut

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.

Future distributors may well reach for comparisons when trying to sell this pleasingly ornery, elusive film, which will likely divide viewers with its intractable narrative swerves and culs-de-sac. But it’s among the most bracingly singular works at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it premieres in the Giornate degli Autori (formerly known in English as Venice Days) sidebar.

The arch introductory narration, over the…