Mateo Gil's Sci-Fi 'Realive' Can't Rise Above Genre Tropes To Engage With Bigger Ideas [Review]

MONTREAL — The Fantasia Film Festival fulfills many purposes over its three-week span. The event provides international and Canadian debuts for many genre hits from festivals like Sundance and SXSW, as well as serving as a showcase for the best of recent cult cinema from Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, among others. Despite competition from TIFF’s Midnight Madness programming and Fantastic Fest in the fall, Fantasia also secures a handful of key World Premieres, perhaps the most notable recent success being “Unfriended” in 2014 (originally titled “Cybernatural” before its acquisition by Universal).

One such example of a film receiving its festival launch from this year’s edition is sci-fi flick “Realive,” from Mateo Gil, regular screenwriter for Alejandro Amenábar. The Spanish-produced, English-language feature borrows key themes from his work with Amenábar, namely the speculative fiction/dream states of “Open Your Eyes” and debates around assisted suicide in “The Sea Inside,” but dives deeper into genre territory. “Realive” centers around a successful young advertising professional, Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes), who, when diagnosed with cancer, has his body “cryonized” in order to be brought back to life in the future. Though undeniably watchable (certainly more so than Fantasia’s other science fiction debut, “Rupture”), Mateo Gil’s film fails to rise above the well-trodden genre film language nor does it meaningfully contribute to its central existential questions on mortality .

The film exists in three periods, jumping back and forth via flashbacks and memories that are interspersed among its five titled chapters. “Realive” begins in 1982 with Marc’s leave-nothing-to-the-imagination birth, jumps forward to 2015 as he learns of his terminal illness, and finally lands in 2084, as he becomes the first successful “Lazarus” returned from the dead. Dr. West (Barry Ward) and Elizabeth (Charlotte Le Bon) are at the head of the experiments to reanimate cryogenically frozen bodies and are responsible for his transition to the late twenty-first century. The bulk of the film follows Marc as he adjusts to his upgraded flesh and the reality of living outside of his time, reflecting back on the experiences that substantiate his identity.

No contemporary science fiction film exists without its references and homage to the classics of the genre. “Realive” is no exception, and its sterile vision of the future feels particularly reliant on tropes of the genre even if the holographic special effects and medical clinic of 2084 are convincingly executed. The most endearing influence on the film is the umbilical cord used to externally control Marc’s vitals, almost certainly a tip of the hat to the game pods in David Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ.” The Cronenberg influence doesn’t end there; there is also the Mind Writer, a VR-looking headpiece that advances the cultural position of the computer by recording memories with 100% accuracy in order to be catalogued and shared.

Equally inspired is the film’s theological reference: a scene from “Last Temptation of Christ” plays as Marc recounts his cinematographic memory of the Lazarus tale, specifically as a parallel to his own growing resentment towards the scientists that reanimated him. That being said, these acknowledgements of Gil’s cinephilic forbears are only surface-level, as “Realive” fails to substantiate the central question of “why we yearn so desperately for life after death.” In moments, this topic is raised; when star-crossed lover Naomi (Oona Chaplin) learns of the protagonist’s plan to take his own life in order to better preserve his body, she asks the hard question of why would anyone care about him in the future, particularly at what is likely to be a point of overpopulation? The only determining factor in Marc’s ticket to the future is his ability to pay his way there and willingness to sacrifice his last few months to preserve his body. The film is far more intent on realizing its sci-fi future than answering key philosophical questions in any meaningful way.

Casting choices certainly don’t help; lead actor Hughes is leaden in a way that isn’t justified by post-reanimation ennui. The film’s European-financed origins are impossible to miss, even as the film never claims a particular location (though one scene is set in Santa Cruz). A variety of accents occasionally slip out from underneath the English-language performances and there’s a least one instance of spotty dubbing. “Realive” likely would have played better in the director’s native Spanish, and not only because of the stiff acting and occasionally hammy dialogue. More to the point, the culturally-specific influence of the sea and open air suffuse the film’s best and most convincing moments. Terrence Malick-esque montages set to Marc’s voiceover orbit around images of his seaside estate and glimpses of his childhood. Still certainly not the most original, but these passages do find “Realive” at its most moving, reliant more on cinematic craft and less on performance.

“Realive” is likely to have an afterlife on VOD — albeit a short one — after its run on the genre film festival circuit, as was the case with Gil’s previous directorial effort, “Blackthorn.” Hopefully the filmmaker finds a more productive and original outlet for his themes (or more inspired collaborators) as he continues to hop genres. Otherwise, his career, or even his filmography, is unlikely to experience its own resurrection. [C]

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