Trepalium

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The French have a magical talent for creating science fiction. They know how to slowly build the kind of suspense that keeps you on the edge of your seat. This series took me to a different place I could never imagine and it seemed completely real and natural all the while. Full of fascinating characters. 'Transferts' is another great French science fiction series to watch currently showing on Netflix but not quite as good as this.

Escapism aside, science fiction is at its best holding up a mirror to today's world. If it wants to also be predictive, there has to be a path suggested of how we got from "here" to "there", even if copious amounts of handwavium are used. The Expanse, for example, has this path. Trepalium does not. It's tough for me to see a path from "here" to "there", at least in the time frame given. But as a mirror held up to certain trends in today's world, it was spot on. The designs are exceptional and the overall mood is a bit Ballardian. Some of the buildings even reminded me of Ben Wheatley's excellent adaptation of High-Rise. J.G. Ballard is even quoted at the beginning of an episode. The acting is appropriate to the plot and the plot (once we accept that the world depicted exists) was good and didn't have any major holes. I'm glad that I watched it. Thanks to Sundance Now.

There are some good critiques here, most notably of the bottled water industry, which in the US is a big racket involving multinationals which filter and re-bottle tap water, charging as much for it as natural spring water. Also a good critique of the psychotrope scam currently underway, with people popping pills to cope with ordinary levels of anxiety and then becoming patients for life. I do agree with some reviewers that the sci-fi and dystopic aspects of this film have been better executed in other, earlier and celebrated works.

It occurred to me about half way through this series (which lasted only one season), that the story is essentially that of the First World vs. the Third World today. Don´t believe me? Go spend some time in South Africa or Latin America, where you will find stark class divisions of people living in gated communities not too far from those who inhabit corrugated aluminum roof huts in shanty towns. This is reality.

The last few seconds of the last episode appear to have been a desperate ploy to secure funding for a second season. (The effort failed, understandably.)

We are very familiar with rich vs poor in future scenarios from movies such as The Maze Runner series (with actual walls), The Hunger Games series (with big hair for the rich), Snowpiecer (2013) or the brilliant Elysium (2013). One might also remember, to a lesser degree, the two District 13 movies (2004, 2009) and Brick Mansions (2014). Trepalium fits neatly into this kind of dystopian future. One problem with it is it is so self-contained. Conveniently the city's solution to unemployment, the wall, is not international, which makes it all a little inward looking. You notice early on it is very dystopian, as there is no TV from outside of the premier's city centre office, high up in one of the skyscrapers. To me it seemed a little unnatural. People spoke of "The South", but no-one seemed to bring actual news from there. It all seemed a little convenient to a budget. Don't get me wrong, visually Trepalium can be stunning, particularly if looking on the inner side of the wall. The tech has good smarts as well. The entire story is basically powered throughout by intense ambition (the rich), or extreme desperation (the poor). It's a good story with good ideas, but to be honest I thought it was let down a bit by the production. For me it lacked a raw edge to the poor, who didn't seem to be notably skinnier. There were some really good performances however, and most of the characterisations were good and comparable to those in the Hunger Games for example. I'm happy to give it an 8 as it was fast moving, intelligent, original and engaging, but I couldn't help thinking that they got certain castings wrong, and should have equalled the effort they put into the superb vision of the rich with a better, much starker version of the poor.