After Lastman and Crisis Jung, Jérémie Périn adventure on the field of the pure SF juice with Mars Express, presented in competition at the festival of Annecy. In the year 2200, Aline, a reckless detective ready to do anything to achieve his ends and Carlos, his acolyte resurrected thanks to his life insurance, formed a duo of shock. On a mission to capture a famous hacker, the investigation turns to the unknown according to the revelations.
Interview with Jérémie Périn - Mars Express
Cyberpunk 2200
Mars Express begins with a memorable opening sequence where the spectator no longer really knows where to give head so the tempo is controlled. Rather than serving us with a narrative scheme with the good, the beast and the hooker, Jérémie Périn preferred to develop a palette of characters all more charismatic than each other, even if he would steal the viewer by eliminating them one by one like old rotten fish.
Surrounded by the animation teams of the JSBC studio, the Lastman re-enacted around this ambitious project designed to push the general public like the angry SF feruses. In writing, we find Laurent Sarfati and it is Philippe Montahaye who composed the music of the film. So it's not annoyed that we find a plucky humour that Richard Aldana would not deny.
The first thing that strikes with Mars ExpressIt is his generosity and inventiveness that knows how to renew the old myths of SF without ever turning to indigestible homage. Whether it is fundamentals, such as the laws of Azimov transformed into cybernetics injunctions, in the theatre of giga-corporations that share the world as boxes of Monopoly, Mars Express In just a few moments deploys a universe that has many things to say.
If SF is said to be predictive, the cyclical and ever closer crises reveal a neoliberalism with head(s) of hydra and voracious appetite that nothing seems to stop. Insatiable, it often limits contemporary productions to a future that is so far away and hardly surprises anyone. How could it be otherwise with the abyss that is today riven privileged and exploited? Paradox of the SF, what remains to be said when we have already jumped on foot together in the precipice of great capital and science without consciousness?
« Thanks to science and technology, we can meet foreign races, and these foreigners will be us. »
By adopting an absolutist perspective where the market has been able to irrigate to the most intimate corners of the being, Mars Express succeeds with his bet to question his spectator, unshakeable by the speed of the story and his revisited references, like his increases that improve without brows, like simple software updates of the last iPhone 14. In this way, this adventure film Rock ‘n Marx Express reinvents SF grammar with intelligence. Neither patchwork nor tribute, Jérémie Périn's feature film weaves its own universe with thoroughness and consistency.
In the absence of a sexual apparatus, deplorable robots (free of software obedience) give way to a form of tantricism rather than fornication. Humans of flesh and bones prostitute their cybernetic avatars, others prefer to prepare their exams via robot farms rather than with great codeine reinforcement. Welcome to the best of the worlds where everything has a price that ignores all ethics, even protocol. Face-to-face communication through telepathy, the ultimate of multi-tasking and hyper-connected disconnection. The robots seem almost more human than their creator.
« A dice full of whirlpools of nothing: it's humanity... »
It is therefore with delight that we see the universe of Mars Express deliver without anything seems to stop. Ideas everywhere, all the time, a sharp sense of humor that is played Poker Faces of his heroes suddenly taken from a nervous rictus to better singer their interlocutor. So many disconnected characters from the old world that Barjavel dreamed of. Cynicism gives the color of Mars Express. The planet is overcrowded and robots are an integral part of our daily lives, like refugees, with a hardly more satisfying status.
As is the custom of fearing all that is foreign to us, robots are held responsible for the scourges of the world, while they are themselves exploited among the exploited. Sad fate that governs the weak, eager to become more powerful than his neighbour of misery. While the technological boom has allowed humanity to flee from what it has rotten on Earth, the alien colonies reproduce the same pattern that goes through man's history.
In this bitter neo-neoliberalism, a cheap market is a private market and the state must be stripped of its regal prerogatives. Variant of voluntary servitude, six centuries later, it is always the same carcan that imprisons humanity with a new layer reserved for robots, which are in direct competition with the luxenproletariat of the new era. Powered by a rhythm, Mars Express takes the viewer by his cyberpunk investigation with permanent twists. In the midst of this chaos, Carlos and Aline form the Starsky and Hutch of the future with panache.
« For men, as long as they are men, to be submissive, it takes two things: either they are forced into it or they are deceived. »
With a well-recorded intrigue, stunning action scenes, an eye-catching visual and a universe so rich that it comes to regret the generic, Mars Express is an anime that should tap into the hearts of SF fans. His end will gladly be forgiven for a rather frustrating but evocative symbolism.
Conclude a story sometimes limits to mourning and Mars Express manages to extract sponcifs that we vomit too often Hollywood and other assimilated, wanting to produce spin-off To gogo. And yet we ask again, even if we dream of a series... but is this serious?
Jérémie Périn, director
Jérémie Périn is a film director and screenwriter. He has in the past made clips like Truckers Delight and Fantasy before gaining popularity with the series Lastman that he realized. He is also a screenwriter on the acid series Crisis Jung. He signed his first SF feature with Mars Express, after years of walling the project. Release scheduled for 22/11/2023.
Indicative filmography
- 2023 March Express
- 2018 Crisis Jung
- 2016 Lastman
- 2014 Like, Share, Die
- 2007 Co2
Trailer of Mars Express
Extract from Mars Express
I promise him a nice critical success when he comes out. 🙂
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