So far this year, I have seen two French science fiction films set in a future dominated by A.I.  In Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, our inevitable A.I. dystopia is mostly a just a framing device for a cyclically doomed love affair that spans multiple lifetimes, beginning in period piece romance and ending in sci-fi futurism.  The less-discussed Mars Express is much more typical to what you’d expect from sci-fi, sketching out a near-future technocracy in which humans & machines struggle to co-exist now that the machines are gaining sentience.  Whereas The Beast aims to alienate viewers with the uncanny, Mars Express‘s genre familiarity is a warm nostalgia bath, recalling vintage VHS era sci-fi titles like Blade Runner, Robocop, Minority Report, and T2: Judgement Day.  Although it premiered at Cannes, Mars Express is not some stuffy festival-circuit art film; it’s a populist sci-fi action blockbuster that happens to be an independent French production.  It’s just familiar enough to make you wonder why Hollywood studios aren’t regularly making large-scale, immersive sci-fi anymore, and then its ambitious third act shoots for the stars in a way that clearly distinguishes it from its most obvious reference points. 

The story follows the expected path of a cyberpunk noir, trailing an alcoholic detective with a traumatic past as she struggles to sober up just long enough to solve the political conspiracy that unfolds before her bleary eyes.  She starts by investigating the isolated crimes of small-scale hackers who have been “jailbreaking” (i.e., liberating) the A.I. workers who operate alongside humans, opening their programming to dangerous, illegal abilities like independent thought & free will.  When one of those hackers is reported murdered on a college campus, her investigation gets much jucier, eventually leading her up the food chain to suspect the corporation behind the future’s most exciting tech of an upcoming power grab that could leave society in shambles.  The detective is more of a misdirect than a proper protagonist, though, as the inner lives of her A.I. partner and his synthetic brethren gradually take over the narrative until the central mystery means much less to the audience than their search for a sense of personal identity.  It turns out that most jailbroken robots just like to have sex & get high with each other all day—which should be their right—but they eventually reach for a greater, cosmic purpose beyond those momentary pleasures that gives the movie something transcendent to build towards between the chase scenes & gunfights.

I have intentionally buried the lede here by not mentioning that Mars Express is animated, since its medium feels secondary to what it wants to accomplish.  The animation can be visually exciting, but it generally stays true to what a live-action version of this same story would look like with a Hollywood-scale budget.  It’s much more likely to simulate a split-diopter shot than it is to bend the rules of physics for the sake of artistic expression, making it questionable why it was animated in the first place.  The choice appears to be a primarily financial one, as if the entire feature were a storyboard for an R-rated sci-fi film for adults that’s still yet to be made.  Regardless, it is beautiful, with only a slight hint of computer-smoothed effects distracting from its elaborate 2D-animation artistry.  Animation frees up Mars Express to dream big, creating A.I. characters with holographic heads floating over their physical bodies, setting high-energy chase scenes through packed nightclubs, and filling the screen with intricate production-design detail that likely would have been scrapped by budgetary restraints if it were staged in live action.  As long as these kinds of films aren’t being produced in traditional form, we have no choice but to celebrate their animated bootlegs.

If you like your French films challenging & inscrutable, turn to Bertrand Bonello.  If you miss the robust American sci-fi blockbusters that have been woefully absent the past couple decades, hop onboard the Mars Express.  It saves all of its narrative abstraction & existential pondering for the final minutes of its runtime, and by then your vintage genre filmmaking nostalgia has been so carefully catered to that you’re ready to see something new.

-Brandon Ledet