Mars Express Film Review

In French with English subs

This French cyberpunk neo noir animation is stuffed full of ideas that come flying at you right out of the chute. It takes a while to catch up as the viewer is thrown into this futuristic society with no background and no pause. Eventually, you start to realize that in this brand-new world, humans share it with robots, androids, augmented humans and back-ups. Back-ups being just like it sounds, a synthetic version of you with all your thoughts and memories. Humans are still in control but things could get iffy with AI and powers that are given to the non-humans. Technology runs everything and is everywhere. Within us and without. Humans have moved from earth to other planets and set up societies there. Governments seem less important than corporations. There is a definite Blade Runner vibe that runs through the film.

The film opens with a woman being killed by an augmented man in her apartment as her roommate sinks into the water in the bathtub and holds her breath. Back on earth private detective Aline and her assistant Carlos are after a hacker who has a warrant on her. Carlos is an android with a hologram as a head. He has had the memories of the dead Carlos installed into his body and still tries to visit his family who want nothing to do with this creature. They capture the hacker and take her back to Mars where they find out the warrant has been deleted. A father comes to them and asks them to look for his missing daughter June Chow who disappeared from college. As they follow up on this, they realize that her roommate's dead body has been stuffed above the ceiling tiles (the girl we saw being killed earlier) and June has gone on the run.

Somebody wants her dead and no one knows why, but it all has to do with a conspiracy to "free" the artificial life forms and erase the code that makes them subservient to humans. It gets surprisingly exciting and tense in some action scenes. The animation is hand drawn with computer generated backgrounds and though not as lovely and detailed as some animations I have seen lately from Japan, it is highly imaginative and there is so much going on in the narrative that it is hard to keep up. It is directed by Jérémie Périn in his first and so far only feature film. 90-minutes.