This was one of the great discoveries of my time at the London Film Festival! The film takes place in a future universe which echoes the rainy, overbuilt, media-saturated cityscapes of Blade Runner and The Fifth Element. Its characters are sentient robots, demigods, and aliens. And yet they talk and behave like highly-strung New Yorkers who spend all their time philosophising in bars and complaining about their therapists. How brilliant is that!
It's essentially a sci-fi retelling of When Harry Met Sally, with the two main characters falling in and out of each other's lives over the course of many years. Except, of course, one of the characters is a half-man-half-fish hybrid, and the other is able to fly.
The joy and hilarity of the film come from how brilliantly it riffs on our messy modern lives. There are nods to social media, online dating, and even Donald Trump, while the attention to detail even in blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments is astonishing: packages are delivered by Amazon Slime! I laughed uproariously but also gasped at its visual ambition: the film was made with a tiny budget and skeleton crew, but uses practical and visual effects to create a world that is just as stunningly realised as any contemporary blockbuster. But despite the intergalactic setting, the characters still feel down-to-earth: I found myself rooting for the central couple, sharing in their joys and pains, and hoping that they would end up together. It's the debut feature of US filmmaker Michael Lukk Litwak and I thought it was magnificent.
It's essentially a sci-fi retelling of When Harry Met Sally, with the two main characters falling in and out of each other's lives over the course of many years. Except, of course, one of the characters is a half-man-half-fish hybrid, and the other is able to fly.
The joy and hilarity of the film come from how brilliantly it riffs on our messy modern lives. There are nods to social media, online dating, and even Donald Trump, while the attention to detail even in blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments is astonishing: packages are delivered by Amazon Slime! I laughed uproariously but also gasped at its visual ambition: the film was made with a tiny budget and skeleton crew, but uses practical and visual effects to create a world that is just as stunningly realised as any contemporary blockbuster. But despite the intergalactic setting, the characters still feel down-to-earth: I found myself rooting for the central couple, sharing in their joys and pains, and hoping that they would end up together. It's the debut feature of US filmmaker Michael Lukk Litwak and I thought it was magnificent.