Meanwhile on Earth

It’s regrettable when a filmmaker’s reach exceeds his or her grasp. Such is the case, unfortunately, in writer-director Jérémy Clapin’s second feature outing, an ambitious but failed attempt at making a profound statement about the pain of loss and efforts to overcome it when an opportunity presents itself. The film follows the mysterious disappearance of astronaut Franck Martens (Sébastien Pouderoux) while on a seemingly routine space mission, leaving behind his grieving family, most notably his younger sister, Elsa (Megan Northam). She misses her brother terribly but is astounded one evening when she inexplicably appears to be able to communicate with him telepathically. No sooner does she resume contact with him, however, when he disappears again, but this time his voice is supplanted by that of a mysterious alien entity (Dimitri Doré), who says that Franck can be returned home but for a price – the securing of five human hosts for the entity and four colleagues to enable them to come to Earth. Elsa is thus thrust into a moral dilemma: How can she bring about her brother’s return while willfully subjecting five innocent individuals to this kind of involuntary abduction? Who should she choose for such a fate? And is this kind of ransom too high a price to pay? These are intriguing questions, a sound basis for a thoughtful morality play. Sadly, however, the execution of this story is clumsily handled. The filmmaker serves up a story that awkwardly seeks to blend science fiction, horror, psychological drama and metaphysics in a single vehicle, one whose narrative plays more like a collection of concept notes than even a first draft of a working script. The result is a disjointed mix of literal, metaphorical and symbolic themes and imagery, including both animation and live action, that lends itself more to inscrutable ambiguity than meaningful clarity. Perhaps this could have been rectified with a longer runtime to yield more extensive and more cohesive development, but its scant 1:23:00 runtime makes the picture feel rushed and somewhat hurriedly patched together, almost as if the creators tried to incorporate whatever elements they could before the production funding ran out. It’s a shame that this project has turned out as it has, given that it seems to stem from noble intents. However, as it stands now, this is more muddle than insight, a film that falls far short of its lofty, high-minded potential.