Meanwhile on the ground**
By Jeremy Clapin
French movie 1h29
You’re missing just one being and everything is evacuated. Lamartine’s verse alone sums up the case of Elsa (Megan Northam), 23, whose astronaut brother disappeared during a space mission three years ago. No trace of him has been found and his sister still hopes for his return from an interstellar impasse. While waiting for him, the young woman seems to float between them, her body in real life, her mind in the stars. One day, she hears strange voices explaining to her that her brother, who is still alive, is their hostage… Dream or reality?
Talented animator Jeremy Clapin likes to convey the discomfort his characters feel by playing with and distorting their physical shell (taleThe vertebralin 2004), making her a stranger to herself (Shizhenin 2009) or away from itself (I lost my body2019). The latest animated feature film, released in 2020, questions the idea of fate through the saga of a severed hand, given life and searching for the rest of its body.
In the context of the “animal kingdom”
In this new film, which skillfully blends live action and animated sequences, Jeremy Clapin once again ventures into a fantasy grounded in reality, a fantasy of characters who are about to lose their footing with him. Equipped with an organic headset, between resin and gum, sent by celestial “snatchers”, Elsa is tasked with finding humans to sacrifice to them so that they can take over their bodies. But this is not without raising some questions of conscience…
The film was shot with great elegance, Meanwhile on the ground It is in the context of these new French works of the genre, which combine intimate drama and science fiction, such as the excellent Animal Kingdomby Thomas Cayley, last year's success.
Crafty but credible special effects, a rousing and atmospheric score, polished, light-filled photography, and a haunting interpretation by Megan Northam: all the ingredients come together to make the film work. But in his desire to experiment too much, the director loses a bit of the dramatic intensity, the wrenching tension that would have made this allegory of difficult mourning so compelling and moving.
