Meanwhile on Earth [Blue Finch Film Releasing]

MEANWHILE ON EARTH
Directed by Jérémy Clapin
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆☆

THIS psychological French sci-fi is a brilliantly crafted tale that uses the vastness of space to shine a very direct light on the human condition. Director Jérémy Clapin looks upwards to gaze inwards: and while doing so raises some seriously scary questions about grief, time and values we place on our humanity. He asks a horrible question: to save the one you love, would you sacrifice someone else?

Elsa (Megan Northam) is a nurse working with older people. Her brother Franck is the small-town hero – a French astronaut whose interstellar adventure has garnered him a statue in his home town.

We learn he disappeared into the blackness of space three years earlier and Elsa and her family are mourning their loss.

With nobody to bury, their grief feels much like that of families during the Great War: their loved ones’ remains were never returned and so they are caught in a netherworld. War memorials were meant to give families a place to collectively remember, and the same goes for Franck’s statue. Then Elsa hears a voice in her head – it is her brother. Just as families in the Great War sought answers by contacting mediums and joining Spiritualist churches, we are asked if Elsa is suffering from a form of grief psychosis.

But the voice, which in turns is Franck’s and then a softly spoken alien, says they can bring Franck back if Elsa helps them “take over” the bodies of four humans. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the human forms will remain – but become vehicles for the extra terrestrial.

Northam turns in a beguiling and honest performance: her dilemma is spine-tingling, as is the premise as to whether she is having a breakdown. Her supporting cast are just as good – father Daniel (Sam Louwyck) has a small but telling role.

Clapin uses animation to create dream-like sequences: Elsa is an artist and so what might feel incongruous breaks to the horror of the situation she faces fits the tone.

There is a lot to unpick. Elsa deals with concepts of the fragility of life, and how time slips through fingers,every day in her work in an older people’s home. In one compelling scene, she oversees a visit from a husband to a wife with dementia: it sets a tone for the philosophical questions the director lays out before the viewer. Meaty stuff.