Upside Down
DIRECTED AND WRITTEN BY: Juan Solanas, STARRING: Kirsten Dunst, Jim Sturgess, Timothy Spall, RUN TIME: 114 minutes, RELEASE: 2012
Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst) fell in love as teens despite the fact that they live on twinned worlds with gravities that pull in opposite directions. Ten years after a forced separation, Adam sets out on a dangerous quest to reconnect with his love.
Upside Down is a French/Canadian film written and directed by Juan Solanas. The first time I watched the trailer for this I must admit I was pretty excited about it. I don't mind a good love story now and again and this one certainly looked visually impressive with a nice little story to boot. Nearly three years later I finally remembered it and got around to viewing it.
Upside Down has quite a unique and interesting premise; two worlds sitting on top of each other, each with their own gravitational pull. The upper planet is rich and thriving, whilst the planet below is a poor ruin, and never the twain shall meet (or at least, no one from the lower planet may visit the top one). Connecting these two planets is a company called 'Transworld'. This greedy corporate company buys oil cheap from down below and then provides them with electricity at high prices, much more than they can afford. A young Adam from down below meets Eden from up above, and they soon make friends. However, one day they are caught out and in a rush to get the Eden back to her own planet she falls back down (up) to her own planet and lands on the rock-face, knocking herself unconscious. Ten years then pass by without him seeing her until he catches a glimpse of her on TV. Adam then sets out to find his childhood love again, but must find a way to connect with her without being caught by the authorities. Oh, and she now suffers with amnesia as the result of her accident and cannot remember anything before her fall. Oh, dear.
The film starts off by explaining the three laws of the two-planet system gravity, then we have Sturgess doing a short narration as his character before taking us back to where the story began. To be honest, I found this narration quite annoying. I just didn't like the sound of Sturgess' voice and it irritated the hell out of me. It just didn't sound right and was a bit whispery and sickly (for want of a better word), but fortunately there wasn't too much of it.
Visually the film looks great (or at least to start with), but as it goes on and you get your head around the upside-down concept you really start to notice this less and less, and it quickly becomes the norm and no longer wows you like t did for the first twenty or so minutes of the film. If you take away its visual appeal and interesting premise, you soon start to notice that Upside Down is actually quite a bland love story. The scripting is pretty weak and it never really gets off the ground running or makes much of an impact. At its root, it's really just a film about social separation with not so very subtle hints of Romeo and Juliet inspiration. It just doesn't have much to offer that makes you sit back after and feel romantically satisfied.
The characters of Adam and Eden (or Adam and Eve if you will, I guess) suffer from two problems. First they are both terribly boring and I didn't find myself caring about either them or their love story plight. Secondly I just couldn't like the choice of actors either. Individually they are both fine actors (certainly Sturgess over Dunst anyway), but they just seemed really dull in this and I didn't feel like they had any chemistry whatsoever, which is a big issue when you are supposed to be selling these two to the audience as destined planet-crossed lovers. Dunst just came across as expressionless and insincere most of the time and Sturgess' doe-eyed overly-excitable acting was just distracting and unwelcome. Everytime they kissed for an overly long period of time I just felt like they were practicing for the very first time and failing to connect with each attempt. It was uncomfortable to watch to be honest. Really, the only decent thing about this film was the fact that Timothy Spall is in it doing a reasonably okay American accent, whilst trying his hardest to give the film a half-decent character although not having much to work with in the way of character development or general scripting.
Overall, this film was thoroughly disappointing. The script is dull, the characters aren't worth the emotional investment and the social separation thing is uninspiring and unoriginal. The visual effects try to mask how slow and flat the story itself is, but that only succeeds for the shortest amount of time. Upside Down s overly long for no good reason and nothing in its climax to warrant the time you spend watching it. The musical score is pretty poor too, sometimes it just felt out of place and unnecessary, and not fitting of each scene that it was attempting to compliment. Give this film a look by all means, but don't expect to blown away by it in the least. Upside Down is a perfect example of wasted potential that left me feeling like I wish I had never bothered.