What do you think about sacrificing a life just to be able to see your lost loved one? Surely there can be a line to be drawn to this question. These contrasting thoughts are at the center of Jérémy Clapin’s “Meanwhile on Earth.” It revolves around the politics of existence, grief, and loss while seamlessly connecting animation with live action. As deeply as it connects with us, it does pose a different kind of challenge, a moral one.
Elsa (Megan Northam) bears the brunt of the loss as she is not able to live life without her astronaut brother Franck (voiced by Sébastien Pouderoux), who disappeared on an interstellar mission three years ago. The void that her brother left cannot be justified with the plaques or the statues, nor can it be filled with them. To cope with such loss, Elsa decides to work at an elder care facility in hopes of getting a sense of fulfillment. While working, she used to dream of spending life with her brother, such bittersweet memories though painful, gave her hope. She felt free.
One night, her tormenting wish is about to be granted; an alien voice (Dimitri Doré) appears in her head, accompanied by a goopy alien “seed” that, once again, speaks to her. They have Franck and promise to give him back to her, but they say that she needs to assist them in taking control of five dead humans, and those will have to die. Aiming to rid herself of her suffering, she readily agrees and transforms “Meanwhile” into an intoxicating blend of tone-setting and trashy sci-horror with body-snatching elements as Elsa searches for replicas in the form of more worthy, and then less worthy, recipients for her new overlords.
That combination seems to be effective, at least for Cell’s majority. Like Elsa, Clapin appears to be worried most of the time, about themselves and the concept of losing someone. Northam’s wide, eyeless gaze combined with her skeletal voice conveys a lot. Northam shows why Elsa is determined to isolate herself after her father’s death and what kind of despair such determination breeds. This makes Elsa’s deep scars ideal for Trudn’s invasion since the simple thought of seeing Franck can deliver a true alien scolex infection. Northam introduces several variants of every new plot twist in a way that everyone watches with awe, every person is familiar with losing a friend and being about to be lost.
The visuals in the film (the camera work by Robrecht Heyvaert, the music from Dan Levy and other artists), in particular the concept of space travel about the music and the film, create a sense of eerieness. To visualize, this translates to a feeling of sadness as if Elsa a woman wanders in an alien world, covered by her cast of emotions. The undertone though is this emotional dissonance and distance that the film conveys is also the film’s greatest plus. What is not as clear is how, across the span of 87 minutes, one can get a gauze of the character of Elsa and her relationship with Franck, without touching upon the more romanticized animated sequences. First starting as fantasy fiction, Elsa then in a more morose tone paints herself as an eco-terrorist targeting unwanted alien hunters. Building from there, it builds upon the question of the line, how gruesome can one go to emerge as the victor? The emotive depth of the even greater parts of the cinematic language is unfortunately lost, as due to its opacity Claplin leaves such parts unexplored.
In one of the more explicit interactions of the film, the mother of Elsa says, “Not everybody locates their way, but we must accustom ourselves to being happy.” But, “Meanwhile on Earth,” digs deeper into the middle of heartbreak, and coping with that feeling even after is best surrealistic perspective. And in a nutshell, rest is discontent, as the film rationalizes, in the closing passages, there is no definite end that would be reached and that is pretty much agitating as well. Then again, perhaps there is no negativity that grief can lessen yes we are capable of moving on and recovering which some still hope will happen but it would be inadequate to state that the pain has disappeared entirely to begin with.
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