How far would we go to be reunited with a loved one we’d lost? Meanwhile on Earth puts a sci-fi spin on this familiar question.
In 2019, Jeremy Clapin’s feature debut, the animation I Lost My Body, was lauded for blending a soulful and tender meditation on loss and moving on within the confines of a high-concept narrative about an amputated hand skittering across Paris. Similar can be said of Clapin’s live-action follow-up, Meanwhile on Earth. Once again, themes of bereavement and life direction rise to the surface in an inventively genre-led story, this time about aliens offering a young woman the chance to be reunited with her astronaut brother who was tragically lost in space.
When the film begins, Elsa (Megan Northam) is in something of a malaise. An apparently gifted illustrator, she has abandoned her hopes of art school to work in the nursing home managed by her mother (Catherine Salee). She is evidently an empathetic carer for her patients, who are navigating the onset of dementia and the fast-approaching end of their lives, but she has also checked-out. The reason is revealed to be the disappearance of her brother, who one would surmise was also her best friend. His loss has affected all of the family, throwing themselves into work or needing the help of sleeping pills just to get a good night’s rest.
This despondent inertia is punctured somewhat by an experience Elsa has near a soaring radio tower that seems to carry a signal from light years away. Suddenly, Elsa begins hearing voices – firstly that of her brother and then of an alien being who gives her an ultimatum that might well bring her brother back. Clapin astutely leaves us with an ambiguity regarding whether what is happening is real, or whether this is the psychological way that Elsa is attempting to heal her wounds – interspersed with the live-action drama are a series of anime vignettes about the adventures of two space adventurers clearly based on the siblings.
The bargain Elsa is confronted with is a low-key riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers which has been through various iterations that have tapped into the Red Scare, Watergate and the war on terror in timely political allegory. Clapin’s film feels far more personal and intimate take on the same material, not just because the invasion in this instance is capped at five, but because the questions it raises are internal, philosophical and about individual lives rather than social conformity.
That closeness is also conveyed in the filmmaking which emphasises the tactility of Elsa’s life through Robrecht Heyvaert’s lensing. The camera lingers on her physical interactions – whether with the people she nurses, her family, or the world around her – creating a tension between her bodily experience and the need for bodies expressed by her formless alien interlocutors. At the same time, these techniques anchor us in the lived moment, reminding us of its importance amidst the unending vastness of profound grief.
On occasion, Meanwhile on Earth also leans with prejudice into its genre trappings. The central premise is inherently high concept in flavour and the film is full of conversations with intangible aliens but there are also explosive moments that veer almost into another genre. Elsa’s first interactions with the alien voice come after she has what is effectively an intergalactic earbud placed into her ear and her attempts to remove it are almost body horror. Equally, the first sequence in which someone is taken by the film’s version of pod people comes in a moment in which Elsa denies a would-be rapist with the gruesome interjection of Chekov’s chainsaw.
How much this marriage of far-out genre and all-too-human drama works will vary significantly based on the preferences of the viewer as they can certainly feel jarring at times, but on the whole the effect is of something dreamily weird – underscored by Dan Levy’s compositions. For those willing to go along with this space oddity, the rewards are myriad. It is a lo-fi but surreal sci-fi tale but equally a richly textured exploration of grief, self-narrative, and how to break free and honour life even when seemingly trapped in the grip of death’s icy fingers.
Director, screenplay: Jeremy Clapin
Cast: Megan Northam, Catherine Salee, Sam Louwyck, Roman Williams, Sofia Lesaffre
Producer: Marc du Pontavice
Cinematography: Robert Heyvaert
Editing: Jean Christophe Bouzy
Music: Dan Levy
Sound design: Vincent Piponnier
Production design: Marion Burger
Production company: One World Films (France)
Venue: Berlinale (Panorama)
In French
88 minutes
