This film about a couple living in isolation on a desolate landscape and contemplating the possibility of one of them going to space, leaving behind an identical android "copy", has two major advantages and one fatal flaw:
(a) It's wonderfully acted, with an electric chemistry between all three main actors.
(b) The setting (a house in the middle of a dystopian wasteland) is really atmospheric, both claustrophobic and melancholically beautiful.
(c) The screenplay is a disaster. And the lack of originality in the premise is the least of its problems.
Ronan and Mescal are two of the best actors of their generation, and I was eagerly waiting to see them act opposite each other. They did the absolute best they could with what they had: two characters without clear background, without foundations, completely lacking transparency in motives and internal journeys. Still, the chemistry was palpable and somewhat rescued what would have otherwise been a completely lifeless film.
I watched a review (by Mark Kermode) saying that the film is doing wonderfully up until 2/3 of the way through, when the endless exposition starts and all the magic and mystery is lost. I disagree. I found this film lacking from the very beginning, because you had this wonderful atmosphere that could have felt like watching an intense 3-person stage play, but the dialogues were all wrong. Boring, full of clichés, and establishing nothing. We see the characters have unexplained emotional outbursts, we get contradictory clues about their relationships, the "mystery" (you can see the plot twist coming from a mile away) is badly built, no gradual progression.
This terribly contrived and pretentious screenplay made me think of Kurt Vonnegut's simple advice for writing: "Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages." Suspense is not such a bad thing, of course. But when it's prioritised over building comprehensible characters, then things start to go wrong. And it's funny that for a film that hides so much from the viewer in the first two acts, it sure loves exposition in the third act. Like, it goes from one extreme to the other with nothing in between, and with both extremes utterly failing to arouse any emotions.
What a waste.
(a) It's wonderfully acted, with an electric chemistry between all three main actors.
(b) The setting (a house in the middle of a dystopian wasteland) is really atmospheric, both claustrophobic and melancholically beautiful.
(c) The screenplay is a disaster. And the lack of originality in the premise is the least of its problems.
Ronan and Mescal are two of the best actors of their generation, and I was eagerly waiting to see them act opposite each other. They did the absolute best they could with what they had: two characters without clear background, without foundations, completely lacking transparency in motives and internal journeys. Still, the chemistry was palpable and somewhat rescued what would have otherwise been a completely lifeless film.
I watched a review (by Mark Kermode) saying that the film is doing wonderfully up until 2/3 of the way through, when the endless exposition starts and all the magic and mystery is lost. I disagree. I found this film lacking from the very beginning, because you had this wonderful atmosphere that could have felt like watching an intense 3-person stage play, but the dialogues were all wrong. Boring, full of clichés, and establishing nothing. We see the characters have unexplained emotional outbursts, we get contradictory clues about their relationships, the "mystery" (you can see the plot twist coming from a mile away) is badly built, no gradual progression.
This terribly contrived and pretentious screenplay made me think of Kurt Vonnegut's simple advice for writing: "Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages." Suspense is not such a bad thing, of course. But when it's prioritised over building comprehensible characters, then things start to go wrong. And it's funny that for a film that hides so much from the viewer in the first two acts, it sure loves exposition in the third act. Like, it goes from one extreme to the other with nothing in between, and with both extremes utterly failing to arouse any emotions.
What a waste.