Like literally all of the best films, Vesper begins with text explaining the apocalyptic future we are about to enter: one where biotechnology has gone rogue, destroying much of the world and much of humanity. Rich people live in distant citadels shielded from the bio threats while everyone else scrabbles around in the mud, relying on the citadels for terminator seeds.
Vesper is a young girl growing up in an abandoned farmhouse
looking after her terminally ill father. They are hermits who refuse to join
the collective run by her uncle, and Vesper ekes out an existence scavenging or
trading for food and for the bacteria needed to keep the father alive, while studying
bioengineering using materials she has stolen from an abandoned laboratory. Her
life changes when a flying biomachine from the nearest citadel crashes, and she
rescues its inhabitant, a strange, pale woman, and brings her home.
Watching an indie sci-fi film like Vesper was a welcome
change from the Marveltsunami that has swept through cinema in recent years. Vesper’s
forest setting and biological creations reminded me of another indie sci-fi
movie, Prospect. Both feature a young lead character having to fend for
themselves in a hostile world and amongst hostile adults, played by Sophie
Thatcher in Prospect and Rafiella Chapman in Vesper. Neither pull their punches
when it comes to pain, suffering and despair, and both use special effects sparingly
and intelligently rather than simply flooding the screen with lightning bolts.
Along with the understated effects comes the understated
villain, the uncle, played by Eddie Marsan. He’s creepy, selfish, deceitful and
vicious when he needs to be, but he’s not angry with you – just disappointed.
He’s as far from a Marvel pantomime supervillain as they come.
Score: Three perfectly bio-engineered stars out of five.
All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded
three stars out of five.
Sleep Dealer is an indie science fiction movie made in 2008 and set mostly in Mexico. I first came across it when reading an interview with the director, Alex Rivera. I recently watched it online and I think it's a beautiful film, deserving a second lease of life in this era of Zoom remote working.
Memo (Luis Fernando Pena) is a tech geek growing up in a farming village but dreaming of escape. When catastrophe strikes his family in the form of an aerial drone attack, Memo is forced to leave. He travels to Tijuana, along the way meeting city girl and aspiring writer Luz (Leonor Varela), gets mini-jack ports inserted painfully in his arms and back, and he's ready to get work in a "sleep dealer factory" where he can plug into the VR network and control a construction robot that could be working in another country.
This movie uses near-future sci-fi concepts to tell a very personal story about oppression, exploitation and the value of life. Remote working is not safe - thanks to dodgy electronics Memo runs the risk of blindness or injury every day he clocks in. His employers don't seem to be interested in health and safety and there's little he can do. But while labour is cheap, water is expensive - following the construction of a dam, the rivers around Memo's home village have dried up Jean de Florette style and the inhabitants pay to collect water from a commercially owned and heavily guarded reservoir.
The remote working theme is interesting as it becomes a metaphor for indirect oppression - while the privileged seem to be running the world, the means of oppression are remote controlled checkpoints with machine guns, and their operators are likely to be other low-paid workers. The drone pilot is revealed to be a young American with a Mexican immigrant background and perhaps it is this connection that leads him to seek information about Memo, leading in turn to a surprising finale with elements of Star Wars or Dambusters.
There's also a Scanner Darkly-esque theme about the many aspects of surveillance: Memo and his brother watch the drone attack unfold on a live TV programme, recognizing their own village as the drone approaches its target. Luz pays her bills by literally selling her memories online, including her memories of meeting Memo - a career choice that does not bode well for their relationship.
Sleep Dealer is accidentally prophetic. In addition to the themes of remote working and social media, it's the second indie film I've seen that predicts a US-Mexico border wall. The other is Gareth Edwards debut Monsters. In this case the wall has prevented migrants coming to work in the US, and as a result the low-paid migrant workforce has become an equally low paid remote working workforce, migrating to work digitally all over the world while remaining plugged in to their factories.
As other reviewers at the time of release noted, a weaker aspect of this movie is the CGI for the aerial drones and the construction robots. While it's good enough to tell the story it's not quite convincing as real. In contrast, the practical special effects are excellent. I squirmed in empathic pain when Memo had his nodes inserted - that's one memory I won't be downloading. And the acting from all the lead characters is superb, with total commitment to role.
Overall this is a likeable and thoughtful indie sci-fi and well worth the three stars out of five I'm giving it.
Score: 3 out of 5 stars
All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars.
Frank Langella plays Frank, an elderly man in the very near future starting to struggle to look after himself. His hard working but distant son buys him a robot butler to help him around the house and to look after him, but Frank is a retired cat-burglar and discovers that the robot is perfectly capable of helping him re-start his career.
Robot and Frank is a gentle and funny film about our relationships with each other and with technology. One of Frank's favourite haunts is the library where he goes to flirt with the chief librarian (Susan Sarandon), but things are changing: books are becoming obsolete, the librarian is now accompanied by her own robot helper who she has named "Mr. Darcy" and the library has been bought by a young entrepreneur who wants to turn it into an "experience."
There are some excellent performances particularly from Langella and Sarandon, and this is a touching film, particularly as you gradually realise just how much Frank's memory has been affected. Also despite the fact that the robot in this film is portrayed as non-sentient, it's still very clear that one could become emotionally attached to it and consider it a friend.
Probably my favourite of the Kino London films in November - an amazing music video, directed by James Spinney, who described it as "an intergalactic love story."
Sci-Fi London 10 will run from 23rd April to 2nd May. The full programme isn't out yet but details of the All Nighters are emerging plus some awesome events are planned above and beyond the films themselves. SFL is a great indie festival with a friendly, sociable atmosphere and naturally I'm looking forward to it. Check out their website or Facebook page for more details.
The Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge will be running this coming weekend, 2nd to 4th April, and is bigger than ever - there are 350 teams registered. I am all cut up to report that this year I won't be entering a team - I'm planning to be back next year ;) - but I'm looking forward to seeing any entries that make it online, and if you're in London that weekend and see anyone with a camera, give them a smile!
"Super" directed by James Gunn, confirmed for SFL 2011 closing night.
Monsters is released in cinemas across the UK from Friday. I'm looking forward to it - watch this space for the review. The movie has received a lot of positive advance press, mostly focussing on the low-budget and atypical production model: this article from the Guardian is typical. Two actors and a tiny crew took a road trip across Mexico seeking out atmospheric locations and shooting scenes along the way, a lot of the dialogue was improvised, and director Gareth Edwards then edited and post-produced the film, tentacles and all, in After Effects on his laptop. More or less.
Gareth Edwards entered Sci-Fi London's 48 Hour Film Challenge three years ago, seeing it as an opportunity to test out a depth-of-field adaptor he'd just built for his camera. The result was the 2008 winning entry Factory Farmed - which surely must have helped when Gareth was pitching the Monsters concept. Inspired by the 2008 entries including Gareth's, I had a lot of fun making films for this competition in 2009 and 2010 and plan to enter again in future.
Factory Farmed: winner of SFL48 2008
For the benefit of all the journalists who are enthused about Monsters: while I share your excitement about this particular release, indie and low-budget films are not new, and Danny Boyle is not the only respected director who started out using guerilla filmmaking techniques. Also it has always been possible to spend a massive Hollywood budget and end up with a box-office flop. It is true that post production and effects tools have become more accessible - including many freeware applications such as my preferred tool Blender - but it's not really about the tools: a good script, good direction (both theatrical and artistic) good character performances and good editing are as key as ever.
Low budget filmmaking is different though. For example, in a more traditional studio there is a tension between the director and the producer, whose role is basically to persuade the director that he can still achieve his artistic vision with only three elephants instead of six. If the director has always come from the angle of what he or she can achieve without spending anything, then this tension is not needed in the first place and there might not be a need to separate the director/producer roles in the same, rigid way. I suspect the ideal arrangement is for two people with a fairly close relationship of some sort to hold both roles but play to their own individual strengths, and this might be why there are so many successful brother-brother partnerships in cinema.
Looking through the Sci-Fi London programme I noticed this film hasn't made the festival. Sleep Dealer is released in the US on 17th April but apart from one showing at Edinburgh in June (last year) I'm not aware of plans to screen it in the UK. It's a shame - no doubt there will eventually be a DVD release but this is an indie film I would love to see in the cinema.
The plot takes in themes of immigration, poverty and exploitation, through two emerging markets - cheap labour for robotic remote control (a natural extension of the call centre economy) and sale of recorded dreams and memories (more fantastical). The former idea appeals to me as I'd had a similar concept in mind for Human Touch. The trailer and the few details provided at interviews show some striking visuals with a lot of thought going into the design. This film was a winner at Sundance and has been noticed at other festivals too so it hasn't appeared completely out of the blue.
I've got no way of knowing whether this film is actually as intelligent or stylish as it should be, but this is exactly the kind of film I would pay to see on the big screen and hope it gets its chance. [edited 17.4.09]
Glad you could drop by! This blog is part support group, part research institute for those who, like me, enjoy the best and the worst of sci-fi. In addition I have interests in computer graphics and independent media, and will continue to document my own adventures in filmmaking and CGI.
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