After the noticed I lost my body, Jérémy Clapin returns with a fable of SF mixing live-action and cartoon-animated : Meanwhile on Earth. Presented at the 23rd edition of the NIFFF, back to this little French science fiction jewel.
From pencil to camera
Elsa (incarnate by the brilliant Megan Northam), 23 years old, let himself be carried by his caring work and his daily train. The disappearance of his older brother three years earlier, volatilized during a space mission, still has a huge impact on him. Yet one evening, she seems to pick up a strange message: someone (or something) seems to be able to bring his brother back to Earth. But there must be a price to pay...
After several shorts, then noticed I lost my body (rewarded at Cannes, Annecy and the Caesars), Jérémy Clapin makes the bet to leave the pure world of animation to move on to a hybrid formula. Indeed, Meanwhile on Earth, if widely filmed in live action, regularly offers long animated sequences. A naive, black-and-white, Japanese-inspired drawing, describing inside the solitary dreams of Elsa, the main character of the story. A mixed technique that is therefore perfectly suited to this story, as Jérémy Clapin explained at the end of the session at the NIFFF.
« It is the story of a character who is between two worlds, between imagination and reality. [...] As a director, I sometimes think of real shots, sometimes in animation, and I don't make a difference between the two. And I tried to incorporate this into the film. »
But if the technique is riding between two worlds of cinema, the character of Elsa himself offers a similar ambivalence. Meanwhile on Earth In fact, offers its spectator the choice of accepting first degree diving into this fantastic world where voices from space surrender (in a magnificent work of sound design) to the ears of characters of mysterious promises, as much as it lets open the door of a narrative entirely fantasized by its main protagonists.
And throughout the movie Clapin will have fun zigzaging between these readings. Offering this beautiful photograph slightly derailed (signed Robrecht Heyvaert) he willingly suggests the fantasy, quasi-oniric track, and then almost immediately scratch other details (which we will not reveal here) that push the spectator and make him lean for the other hypothesis, the first degree. And the feature film is full of visual details (appearance, disappearance of objects, photographic work, ...) that accumulate to create a unique atmosphere, making second viewing as exciting as necessary.
Ghost movies
If Meanwhile on Earth is above all a catchy narrative, embarking his spectator on a real sensory journey, he articulates no less numerous moral dilemmas for his main protagonist, having to choose on Earth lives to replace to potentially find his brother's.
A masterful rereading of science fiction of the Faustian pact, the modern myth excavated by Goethe, where the Machiavélique Mephistophelès is replaced by extraterrestrials constantly out-of-field (Clapin long hesitated to show them and ended up keeping them completely out of frame, fortunately !). And it is this context that allows moral questions to graze, flooding those moving sands in which the main protagonist tries to unravel.
« The film poses this horrible question of the value of a life. It was the challenge of the film: can I get the spectator on board with the character, despite all his questionable moral choices. »
And these questions come up against real figures that our society is trying to invisivize: the old people who are dying in the Ehpad (Elsa is working on it), the homeless, the simple minds... These ghosts that Elsa charms like a Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin to deliver them to these enigmatic aliens, they are the same that our own society is trying to replace. To hide. To make disappear. And it is not the recent homeless scandals that we move to make a clear place during the Olympic Games that will contradict this theory...
And Meanwhile on Earth skillfully manages to question these sometimes horrible moral choices while not disconnecting the viewer of Elsa, gradually becoming an anti-hero with which our empathic bond will never really be broken. A tenuous balance that Clapin holds from end to end.
Three paths...
Elsa follows three parallel paths: her way of life in the Ehpad where she works (otherwise sublimely filmed, away from the grayish poncifs usually served, and it's quite rare to be mentioned), her way in the forest by which she manages to substitute the lives demanded by the aliens and her mental path, in drawing-animated, in a fantasy spaceship.
« Between all these routes, I was thinking a lot about the mythological figure of Charon, this character who makes the souls cross from one bank to another of the Styx. »
And in fact Elsa takes on Charon's role in his daily life, accompanying the elderly to their last journey, and then giving in to the demands of the aliens where, by training them in the forest, she pushes them from one bank (the real world) to the other (the unknown of this alien world). These narratives multiply the reading grids of the film while responding to one another, making Meanwhile on Earth A particularly daring film tale, a transition from animation to brilliantly negotiated live-action and an aesthetic object that you feel meticulously crafted. In short, a very nice surprise of this selection of NIFFF, to find already on the screens.
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