Immortel (ad vitam), a French science fiction/cyberpunk production based on a series of graphic novels and filmed on a so-called “digital backlot” (i.e., actors are filmed in front of blue or green screens, digital backgrounds are added in post-production), is an ambitious, convoluted, and ultimately, muddled mess, packed with underdeveloped ideas and characters, but limited by a modest budget, wildly uneven special effects, and sub-par storytelling. Enki Bilal, the author of the graphic novels, also wrote and directed Immortel. Immortel's shortcomings are due either to limitations in the source material, uncritically carried over the screen adaptation, or to the need to compress the graphic novels into a feature-length film. Bilal seems either unaware or incapable of balancing plot and exposition, preferring ambiguity and vagueness. Bilal, to be fair, may be simply reflecting the tendency in European filmmaking to associate profundity with ambiguity.
New York City, 2095: synthetic humans, enhanced humans, human experimentation, ancient animal-faced gods, floating pyramid-shaped ships, a portal to another dimension or world located in Central Park, floating newscasts and billboards, flying cars and taxicabs, monolithic skyscrapers, corrupt oligarchies, an all-powerful bio-medical corporation, blue-haired, white-skinned woman suffering from amnesia, a resurrected (or rather reawakened) urban revolutionary with a vaguely leftist agenda, are all part of the messy future dystopia envisioned by Bilal in Immortel. With this many ideas floating around, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Bilal loses control on his source material within the first half hour.
After a head-scratching prologue inside an Egyptian-styled pyramid ship, Immortel introduces Horus, the falcon-faced god ostensibly responsible for the creation of humankind. Horus, it seems, has been sentenced to death (after his immortality has been stripped away, of course), for some unspecified crime. His generous captors, however, have given him a seven-day reprieve, which he decides to spend on earth. Segue to Jill Bioskop (Linda Hardy), the already mentioned blue-haired, white-skinned woman. The Eugenics Corporation has captured Jill, ostensibly due to her striking physical appearance, along with several other non-humans. Jill is shipped to the Eugenics Corporation headquarters, where a medical researcher, Elma Turner (Charlotte Rampling) frees her in exchange for services rendered (in this case, Jill will be her human guinea pig). Jill may not be of human origin. She also has a philosophy-spouting guardian, John (Frédéric Pierrot) who hides his face behind a black mask.
While Horus wanders around New York City, apparently in search of a host body, a revolutionary, Nikopol (Thomas Kretschmann), is accidentally released from suspended animation. Nikopol is in year twenty-nine of a thirty-year sentence. Horus, frustrated by the absence of “clean, untouched” bodies (bodies that haven’t undergone invasive medical procedures) finally finds his host body in the recently resurrected Nikopol. With time winding down, Horus has inexplicably formulated a plan that will help him avoid his death sentence. His plan, of course, involves Nikopol and Jill. In the meantime, an Nikopol’s old enemy, a synthetic human, Senator Allgood, unleashes a red-skinned, walking hammerhead shark, a Dayak (there are actually two forms of the Dayak, with the other resembling a cross between a shark and a squid, but both have the ability to survive outside of water).
With Nikopol and Horus sharing a body, Bilal uses this opportunity to fill Immortel's flaccid, sagging middle section with interminable dialogue scenes between the two characters. Most of the scenes take place inside Jill’s dilapidated hotel room, sometimes with her sleeping in the same room or in the bathroom. This slack middle section ends appropriately enough, with an attack on Jill and Nikopol inside her hotel room, followed by an airborne car chase lifted from The Fifth Element, flight into the Intrusion Zone, and a final, unengaging confrontation between the second, more deadly, Dayak and a literal deus ex machina that leaves the central characters passively inactive on the sidelines.
Bilal, showing the strains of an approach that favors pastiche over originality, never hesitates to liberally “borrow” from other, well-known science fiction films (some of them acknowledged “classics,” making his borrowings that much more brazen and calculated). He borrows his future dystopia cityscapes from Metropolis, Blade Runner, Jill’s unique origins (and airborne car chase) from The Fifth Element, sentient animals from Johnny Mnemonic, the alien gods, Egyptian imagery and pyramid ships from Star Gate, and Nikopol’s cryogenic imprisonment from Demolition Man. Bilal even has a character wink out of existence, while a second character holds his now empty clothes (an element borrowed from Star Wars).
These borrowings, however, might be excusable if Bilal displayed storytelling skills commensurate with his ambitions. Unfortunately, Bilal seems to have no understanding of character, plot, or pacing. Bilal’s decision to use CGI humans as secondary characters is equally puzzling. Bilal’s animators struggle to keep the synthetic humans in Immortel above video game quality (sometimes failing), which inevitably makes Bilal’s film look cheap and unprofessional. Despite having a built in fan base familiar with the original French-language graphic novels, it should come as no surprise that Immortel did poorly at the French box office. For his next effort (assuming he receives one), Bilal should streamline his epic pretensions, develop a more linear storyline, and use CGI only for backgrounds and, as needed, for action scenes.
© Mel Valentin, 11th April, 2005
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