Month: October 2023

Mars Express is French animated sci-fi fun with familiar famous voices

Matilda MarseillaiseLeave a comment
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Mars Express is an animated sci-fi written and directed by Jérémie Périn with a cast of famous French voices. The film was part of the Adelaide Film Festival program and is also part of the Brisbane International Film Festival which is still on.

Mars Express

Aline Ruby is a private detective and Carlos is her robot work partner. Together they are tasked with investigating the disappearance of a young university student. Their investigations taking place between both Earth and Mars reveal a murky world of robot hacking, brain farms, and corruption. Mars Express also reveals growing conflict between robots and the humans who control them.

 

As mentioned above, there are also some famous voices among the cast. Aline Ruby is voiced by Léa Drucker (who was in Incredible but true, The Colours of Fire, and The Nannies at this year’s AFFFF). Her work partner Carlos is voiced by Daniel Njo Lobé (a French actor who has done a lot of dubbing into French the voices of actors such as Harold Perrineau (Lost, Sons of Anarchy), Mike Colter (Luke Cage, Evil), Hill Harper (Les Experts : Manhattan, Good Doctor), Idris Elba (Luther) or Mahershala Ali (True Detective)). Matthieu Almaric voices Chris Roy Jacker (he will be familiar to anyone who watched the wonderful series The Bureau).

Mars Express

In this futuristic world, robots are common place, and cars are all driverless. People and their robots live on Mars. Phone calls take place simply through thoughts. Words don’t need to be physically exchanged. Similarly, you can communicate with someone via thought alone when you need to.

 

Mars Express is also cleverly written, with some humour thrown in for good measure. Even so far in the future, relatable to today’s audiences. Even a few centuries away from now, robots will have to shut down for updates and sometimes have insufficient memory for them – a problem all too familiar to anyone with a phone full of photos and video when it comes to update time. It’s also quite inconvenient when you’re having a simple medical procedure performed by a robot and it suddenly shuts down and restarts itself mid-procedure and there’s nothing you can do but wait.

 

The colourful fast-paced action animation combined with a pulsating soundtrack keeps the audience on their collective toes. While the film is described in the Adelaide Film Festival program as “animated French sci-fi noir”, chatting with people more familiar with the genres has revealed that Mars Express is not typical of the noir part of the category. Whereas noir films are usually quite sombre in its appearance, this film takes place in the daylight, futuristic and clean city-scapes with vast plains of desert and towering mesas in the distance; there is no perpetual night, no continuous rain.

Mars Express

Interestingly, whereas a lot of sci-fi is set only a few decades away, and we are supposed to believe that there are whole civilizations living in cities on other planets, Mars Express stepped away from the typical pattern by not telling us upfront what year we were in (the press kit suggests 2200) and in so doing, made the idea of transport between Earth and Mars and humans and robots living together on Mars, more credible.

 

In addition to the timeline factor, Jérémie Périn & Laurent Sarfati have clearly paid a lot of attention to detail having people living in domed cities, machines that update, and even consulting a cosmetologist for accuracy of the depiction of Mars.

 

In so doing, Mars Express has achieved what so few sci-fi films have managed to achieve. We would be interested to see Jérémie Périn & Laurent Sarfati’s other works.

 

Ultimately, Mars Express is a film for lovers of animation and sci-fi but equally those who are new to the genre like this reviewer.

5 CROISSANTS

Matilda Marseillaise was a guest of Adelaide Film Festival

Mars Express hasn’t yet been released in France. It will be in cinemas there from 22 November 2023.

 

For more Adelaide Film Festival content, see below:

Hexagone Highlights: French Cinema at Adelaide Film Festival 2023

On the Adamant is a moving documentary about a Parisian day centre with a difference

Apolonia, Apolonia is a beautiful documentary from Danish film-maker Lea Glob

 

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Apolonia, Apolonia is a beautiful documentary from Danish film-maker Lea Glob

Matilda MarseillaiseLeave a comment
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Apolonia, Apolonia isn’t just a documentary about an artist. It is also a documentary about the director, her friendship with the artist, an infamous Paris theatre and Oksana Shachko, a feminist activist with the group Femen, who was banished from her home country, Ukraine.

Apolonia, Apolonia

The film documents the struggles of Apolonia Sokol, a talented young female artist striving to produce works which are to the standard necessary to be selected for an exclusive exhibition among graduates of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

 

Sokol is no ordinary artist – she grew up quite literally in the theatre – her parents transformed an old laundromat into a theatre, that they named the Lavoir Moderne Parisien, and lived upstairs. Throughout the documentary we see the heady bohemian life that she leads with creatives constantly in her life. It’s easy to see why director Lea Glob says “no motif has caught my eye like her”. She has a striking appearance with big eyes that draw you in and a Frida Kahlo-esque brow. Beyond her appearance, Apolonia is captivating in every moment we see her, whether happy or sad.

 

The documentary spans a remarkable 13 years and takes us to Paris, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, and Poland as we follow Apolonia’s life and travels.  It is also in multiple languages as Apolonia speaks to people in those different countries. Sokol speaks in in French with those in France, in Danish with the director, and English with Oksana and when in the USA.

Apolonia, Apolonia

We follow Apolonia through her struggles trying to make it big as an artist with barely any money to her name. The infamous art buyer Simchowitz, called the Patron Satan by The New York Times (read that article here) provided Apolonia with a studio, but she must work day and night to produce works. She tells him she can create 10 works a month, whereas, in reality she normally only produces four. We see Apolonia as a living example of the starving artist. She sees that “The only way out is to be really good” and thus she strives to be recognised as good enough to appear on exhibition walls and to be purchased by art buyers.

 

Apolonia’s struggles are not just as an artist but especially as a female artist – she feels in order to make art she has to relinquish the idea of motherhood. She doesn’t see a way to care for a child and to produce art. Her father questions whether young women not wanting children is a feeling shared by most of her generation.

 

Apolonia, Apolonia is unlike any other documentary we have seen – it is rare for a documentary to show the person behind the camera and their relationship to the subject. In turning the camera on herself at times, Lea Glob revealed a strong relationship between these young women as they go through various stages of their lives.

Apolonia, Apolonia

The film won the prize for Best Nordic Documentary at Nordisk Panorama.  It was also awarded a Firebird Award in the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and best film at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. It is easy to see why.

 

The documentary inspired us to research what was portrayed in the film and to discover more about Apolonia Sokol, what has become of the Femen movement, and the Lavoir Moderne Parisien theatre. Being inspired to research after watching a documentary speaks to the way in which it captured our attention and sparked our interest. By the end of Apolonia, Apolonia, you too will find yourself wanting to find out more about the fascinating people depicted in it.

 

Lea Glob’s Apolonia, Apolonia is an intelligent, beautiful documentary that shows not only the struggles of making it as an artist but of being a woman in a man’s world. It also celebrates female friendships and is a film we strongly recommend you watch.

5 CROISSANTS

Matilda Marseillaise was a guest of Adelaide Film Festival 

P.S. While filming on Apolonia, Apolonia started before her other films, Lea Glob released two other films, Love Child and Olmo & the Seagull before the release of this one, making it her third film.

 

Read our other review of another Adelaide Film Festival selection below:

On the Adamant is a moving documentary about a Parisian day centre with a difference

 

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