Review: Upside Down (2012)

Cast: Jim Sturgess, Kirsten Dunst, Timothy Spall
Director: Juan Solanas
Country: Canada | France
Genre: Drama | Fantasy | Romance | Sci-Fi
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Note: Upside Down opens on March 15th

It’s the same old story: boy finds girl; boy loses girl; girl forgets boy; boy finds girl again; boy manipulates interplanetary antimatter to subvert gravitational pull and traverse social boundaries. Well, perhaps that last part is a little different: it’s a shiny new sci-fi conceit that constitutes an appealing wrapper in which to package a classic tale of forbidden love, but that’s not to suggest that Upside Down is merely a trite tale disguised in enticing effects. Blessed with a breadth of imagination to conjure a whole other world—in fact, two of them—it’s a wildly inventive work from writer/director Juan Solanas, making his English-language debut in a most attention-grabbing manner.

Recalling throughout Inception’s already-iconic image of a street folded over upon itself, it’s an undoubtedly visionary film, Solanas’ creation of this strange solar system in all its peculiar physical laws seeing every shot meticulously crafted to create the dichotomous look of this life.

So loaded with details as to warrant, and even excuse, an introductory sequence of voiceover exposition, Upside Down sets itself on a pair of Earth-like planets who revolve together around one sun, their independent gravitational pulls keeping the residents of the upper, more affluent world separate from the impoverished others below. Recalling throughout Inception’s already-iconic image of a street folded over upon itself, it’s an undoubtedly visionary film, Solanas’ creation of this strange solar system in all its peculiar physical laws—neither planet’s gravity has an effect on anything from the other—seeing every shot meticulously crafted to create the dichotomous look of this life. Most striking are the interior shots: connecting the planets is Transworld tower, whose 0^th story—it has, of course, negative and positive levels—sees one society’s ceiling become another’s floor.

Solanas is no stranger to such wowing special effects: he made his debut with 2003’s The Man Without a Head, deserving winner of the Cannes Short Jury Prize and an impressively actualised delivery on the promise of that terrific title. It was a film that, at its heart, spoke to the idea of accepting oneself and realising that our idiosyncrasies are what make us unique. In a sense, Upside Down revisits that same theme, its disparate societies and dichotomous planets attesting the beauty of individuality and the necessity for difference. Much of the communication of this falls to the central romance between Adam and Eden, forged in youth and rekindled in later life, when he determinedly works to prove that his love is stronger than gravity. What might have been rather a twee tale, the corniness of that last sentence considered, becomes a good deal more endearing courtesy of the refreshing charisma shared by Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst.

Were it not for the fantastical framework, there’s no doubt that Upside Down would be entirely unworthy of attention, no amount of effort on the part of the performers enough to hide the reality that its story is formulaic to a flaw.

Where Sturgess and Dunst make believable the attraction between their characters and their determination to be united, Solanas is less successful in his handling of their romance, its consistent familiarity—most prominently, and alas egregiously, in the final act—revealing the uneven time and attention given to the characters in contrast to the concept. Were it not for the fantastical framework, there’s no doubt that Upside Down would be entirely unworthy of attention, no amount of effort on the part of the performers enough to hide the reality that its story is formulaic to a flaw. It’s because of this that the mind comes to drift from the drama and dwell instead on the science, which hardly stands to scrutiny. It’s the sad, irrevocable truth that Solanas never supplants the insistent niggling voice of logical thought at the back of our minds, never succeeds in quelling the constant background awareness that none of this makes a terrible amount of sense.

It’s tragic that Upside Down has neither the strength of character nor story to fully realise its vision, but oh, what a vision it is. Solanas has tried in earnest here to do something new, and though his tight ties to aspects so old has rendered those efforts unsuccessful, the ambition of the production is earnest and immense, and worthy of praise unfiltered. This was a bold movie to make, and only celebration befits such boldness. In all the sumptuous visual detail of these vibrantly realised words, in every manipulation of their strange science for comic effect, Upside Down is a remarkable and resounding success. In other aspects, it is not, but we shouldn’t begrudge it that. Imagination and inventiveness on this scale is all too rare in big-budget sci-fi; with enough encouragement, filmmakers like Solanas might just make our multiplexes more interesting places.

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Ronan Doyle

Director of Movies On Demand & Sr. Staff Film Critic at Next Projection

Having spent the vast majority of my life sharing in the all too prevalent belief than cinema is merely dumbed-down weekend escapism for the masses, I was lucky enough to turn on a television at the exact right moment to have my perspectives on the medium completely transformed. Those first two and a half hours marked the beginning of a new life revolving around—maybe even depending upon—the screen and the depth of artistry, intellectual stimulation, and emotional exhilaration it can provide.

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