Planetarium (2016)
Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski

Film Review

Rebecca Zlotowski's third directorial outing, after her acclaimed debut piece Belle épine (2010) and its somewhat less well-received follow-up Grand central (2013), is a mystifying and gloriously overblown meditation on the somewhat tenuous connection between cinema and the paranormal.  Like Olivier Assayas's recent fantasy digression Personal Shopper, Planetarium is a film that positively wallows in its unbridled artfulness and lack of substance - indeed it goes out on an extraordinally long limb to convince us that all a film needs to impress are some excessively stylish directorial flourishes and a surfeit of seductive visuals.  The comparison between the two films is apt because they both exhibit the same worrying tendency that has been creeping into art house cinema over the past few years - a rejection of narrative form in favour of a more abstract and wishy-washy kind of movie experience, auteur-plus-plus.

Zlotowski doesn't entirely make the faux pas that Assayas committed in his film, which was to regard the plot as an optional extra, but her bizarre impressionistic fable feels just as insubstantial, despite its welter of lush visuals and some mesmerising performances from its two über-photogenic lead actresses - Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny).  There's an obvious point of contact between the mystical art of moviemaking, which conjures up deceptively tangible realities from nothing more than the interplay of light and shadow, and the black art of the career spiritualist, whose ability to transcend this mortal sphere and reach out to the dead may be real or delusional (it hardly matters which).  Set against these shimmering mirage realities there is a world that feels even more fantastic - Europe in the 1930s, a dark place where tolerance and peaceful co-existence are slowly giving way to the worst kind of fanaticism as the continent slides towards the grimmest period in its history.  Where is the dividing line between fantasy and reality?  Zlotowski's film almost convinces us that no such boundary exists.  Everything is illusion.

It's hard not to succumb to the visual allure of Planetarium and its strangely hypnotic weaving together of parallel realities, but by the mid-point its lack of a concrete foundation soon becomes painfully evident.  It's all smoke and shadows, eerily evocative of the period it depicts and yet failing to engage at anything more than a superficial level.  The main characters, despite being convincingly portrayed, are as vague and insubstantial as the gossamer narrative that they coast along and this adds to the impression that you aren't so much watching the film as dreaming it.  Zlotowski's indefinable third feature is certainly an interesting experiment in form and it comes with its own unique poetry.  But, like Assayas's misjudged fantasy offering, it leaves you feeling that your time has been mostly wasted and that all you have witnessed is a vague outline of the far superior film that might have fallen from the ether had the director been willing to go the extra mile.

Film Synopsis

In the late 1930s, two young American sisters, Kate and Laura Barlow, have found success on the cabaret circuit as mediums able to make contact with the spirits of the dead.  Whilst performing in Paris, they are spotted by a film producer, André Korben, who, impressed by their paranormal abilities, hires them for his next film.  Thrilled to take part in this wildly ambitious venture, the sisters agree not only to take up residence in Korben's palatial home but also to participate in séances to indulge his fascination for the occult.  As the two women allow themselves to be drawn into Korben's own fantasy world they fail to take stock of the real-life dramas that are accumulating in the world outside.  The Jewish film producer also fails to see the dangers that are heading his way as a wave of anti-Semitism surges across the continent of Europe...