Megan Northam in Meanwhile on Earth.
Photo: Metrograph Pictures

In 2019 the French animator Jérémy Clapin premiered. I lost my bodya strangely moving and melancholic little gem of a film about a severed hand who suffers all kinds of crazy experiences while traveling through Paris.
Released in the United States through Netflix, the film was a critically acclaimed festival hit that achieved a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature (finally losing to toy story 4). Clapin’s last effort, Meanwhile on Earthis a largely live-action drama, but retains the spirit of animation. It’s a gorgeous film full of striking compositions and surreal twists, but the shallow story could at times have worked better in a more fanciful medium, one more welcoming to dreamlike abstraction.

The film features an intriguing central performance in Megan Northam’s Elsa, a young woman still mourning the loss of her brother, Franck, a young French astronaut who went to space and never returned. Elsa works at a nursing home run by her mother, but spends her days and nights remembering Franck, spray painting. F in statues around town, where his brother is something of a local folk hero. Here’s a hint of a premise: Aside from her quiet graffiti efforts, our protagonist’s pain manifests itself more as a general bad mood than anything particularly tangible. With his large inner eyes and perpetual scowl, Northam effectively conveys Elsa’s restless, blind life. This is a woman obsessed with something she can never see, hear or feel. But then he starts receiving messages in his head suggesting that Franck may still be alive, that he is being held by unseen aliens who want to trade him for human bodies that they can then occupy. We may begin to wonder if Elsa is simply losing her mind, even though some moments of Cronenberg-style body horror strongly suggest that the aliens are real.

Determined to bring Franck back, Elsa begins trying to carry out the aliens’ orders, which adds a slight ticking feel to the narrative. (Clapin literally cuts to a stopwatch at some points.) But the suspense is half-hearted and the film’s filmy approach to incident remains. Certain scenes are filmed with genuine urgency, including a violent and horrifying confrontation, while others are presented obliquely and quietly, without rhyme or reason. In live-action cinema, the tactile nature of the world, its weight, its solidity, is pressed upon the viewer’s consciousness; Psychologically, we need to understand why scenes are presented as they are, even if it’s just a vibe rather than genuine logic. On the contrary, animation foregrounds the pictorial, which is its own aesthetic doctrine. To put it another way: animation can get away with a lot more because of its inherent supernatural nature.

Clapin incorporates some charming animated sequences, often involving Elsa’s dreams about reuniting with Franck. The contrast is powerful and draws attention to the chimerical nature of his quest. But this also underscores the director’s challenge with the rest of the film. We understand that Elsa must find a way out of her pain, which prevents her from moving forward in life. (In addition to working for her mother, she lives at her parents’ house, in Franck’s old room.) Therefore, his desire to bring his brother back is not only delusional but also emotionally dangerous. We understand this from the beginning and understand that his perception of reality may not need to be taken at face value, which in turn calls into question much of the film’s already vague narrative. These are not all bad things. Clapin has made a film that leaves us bewildered but also curious. Where it stumbles is in evoking the emotional charge it clearly seeks. Meanwhile on Earth It’s beautiful, but alienating.