Biosphere

Before screening this film at The Toronto Film Festival, the presenter asked the audience not to spoil it. This request limits the possibility of a thorough review, as there is not much that can be said about it's plot without giving away it's one trick pony.

Genre-wise, the film steers between sci-fi, drama and grotesque comedy, relying on a single outstretched joke that becomes quite tiresome after multiple iterations. Some members of the audience were laughing throughout, but it may have just as well been a coping mechanism to deal with content that wasn't entirely easy to stomach.

There wasn't any actual beginning or an end, just references to a backstory that was never fully explored. There was no resolution offered here either, making it feel as though the writers have given up halfway.

What did hold this together and stopped me from walking out (in addition to my middle row seat), was the excellent acting by Sterling K. Brown & Mark Duplass. They were extremely believable, despite the ridiculousness of the plot, adding to the overall atmosphere of discomfort that it evoked.

It's an interesting premise. The strength of this film is the way the setup and characters back stories are disbursed very gradually, a drip at a time, which keeps your attention. In the end though, the set up doesn't really matter a whole lot.

When the main thrust of the narrative becomes clear, rather than running with it and guiding us towards a memorable conclusion, the film chooses to go with blandness, presumably hoping we take the non-committal ending to be open and courageous, and not simply uninspired.

Good performances, good ideas, good direction. The story was just a little too weak for me.

Sterling K Brown is always a pleasure to watch he is so good at his craft. This could easily have been a stage play with its simple yet thought-provoking ideas on gender, humanity and friendship. In fact, it probably would have received better reviews as a play! Mark Duplass creates a claustrophobic, moody atmosphere on a small set that focuses on big ideas. At the same time, it's ironic humour cuts through it's serious side. Leaving lots of unanswered questions, don't expect deeply researched scientific theory, nor good science fiction. I enjoyed it for the acting and deep it's ideas on gender and humanity.

At the end of the world, former President of the United States Billy (Mark Duplass) and his science advisor and best friend Ray (Sterling K. Brown) live out their existence in a self-sufficient shelter made by Ray. When the last female fish in their eco system dies, the two become consigned to the fact their days are now number with the artificial ecosystem no longer self-sufficient. However, destruction is averted when one of the remaining male fish begins to undergo sequential hermaphroditism, the process of which allows it to change from male to female and procreate. With the appearance of a mysterious greenlight in the sky, a similar process soon begins to happen to Billy.

Biosphere comes to us from the Duplass Brothers production company and is written and directed by Mel Eslyn along with Mark Duplass who also stars in the movie based on an outline the two developed at a writers retreat in 2018. As one can note from the Duplass films of the past, the brothers have a filmmaking style that often mixes quirky indie tropes around uncomfortable or charged topics. Biosphere is no different here as it takes a very loaded approach and while it has charm and some unique ideas, it also feels like a movie that's maybe a little too stretched.

To start off on a positive note, Sterling K. Brown and Mark Duplass have fantastic chemistry together and with the movie being a chamber piece it definitely needed that authentic buddy dynamic in order to sell this premise with the two being something of an "odd couple" with Ray the more optimistic and knowledgeable one while Billy is the slightly dumber pessimist. The movie itself is rather odd and the best way I can describe it is if we followed Dr. Strangelove past its ending and mixed it with the movie Nothing with a seasoning of Junior (the Schwarzenegger film from 1994). The directions the movie takes are so unexpected (especially going in blind) that I was legitimately engaged in spite of the rather rambling nature of the film. The movie clocks in at about 107 minutes, and it definitely feels like it could've benefitted from being trimmed to a leaner 85 to 90 at most. A big reason is the primary plot doesn't really shift into gear until about a half hour in and that first half hour offers a lot of points that feel repeated throughout the later bit of the film. I certainly enjoyed the shifting character dynamics and relationships in the film, even if the film itself sometimes proved a challenge to get through. Biosphere certainly isn't the first film to go into this kind of territory as it was flirted with in the 1985 science fiction film Enemy Mine and we even saw it explored to a degree in the "Brinky" episode of Pinky and the Brain, and while I definitely prefer those over this given the choice, Biosphere isn't without it's own insights into the premise.

Biosphere won't be for everyone and for people who already like the Duplass brothers or premise you'll need to give the film a lot of patience in order to get to the best parts of the film. For those willing to give it a chance you'll find a flawed movie, but one with some interesting ideas.

Biosphere combines romcom and message movie elements with a science fiction plot, with the latter pulling those elements from the genre which serve to support the message by putting characters in a particular situation, as distinguished from scifi that's more rooted in the popular entertainment aspects of the genre. This kind of science fiction drama will appeal to a certain audience if it's well-written from beginning to end. It's relatively uncommon for me to find something that I think is wildly overrated on Letterboxd. Biosphere is an audacious but ultimately unsuccessful film.

The movie is funny in parts, and the acting is very good. It falls short for me in a couple of key areas. First, it's too long for what it's trying to achieve. If it'd been condensed to an hour, it could have been more impactfull. Instead, it delivers exposition too slowly via scenes that are too similar to be anything but repetitive; lingering shots that are supposed to have emotional resonance, but somehow don't; and other scenes that are just longer than necessary.

I also found the score annoying, distracting, and too cute by half, though I'm sure some people will find it quaint or amusing. This shortcoming extends to the film's conclusion, which is like the lame punchline to a joke that took too long to tell.