What We Mean by Yesterday

A luckless high school teacher stumbles through a series of violent and raunchy misadventures in this winding and often hilarious fever dream from Marra (Night Business). Slugging whiskey in the teacher’s lounge after lashing out at a student, Bruce Barnes accepts a colleague’s offered cigarette. “I need to come down from this anger high,” he mutters as he takes a drag, only to learn it’s laced with speed. So begins an after-hours odyssey of road rage, barroom brawls, robbery, and swinger sex. Amplifying the narrative’s delight in extremes, a mystery woman Bruce meets in a bar introduces him to Animal Crackers, a mind-expanding sexual enhancement drug administered by dart gun. From that point, the enigmatic plot takes another frenzied, hallucinatory turn. Marra’s rough-and-ready line art seems synced to Bruce’s slackening hold on reality. The sketches become looser and more energetic as the story progresses—as if Marra’s pen is racing to keep pace with the rush of outlandish scenarios. A deliriously scuzzy wild ride, this will appeal to fans of the transgressive absurdism of Johnny Ryan or Yoshikazu Ebisu. (Aug.)