Originally published in Cinema Knife Fight, October 16, 2013
During this year’s Academy Awards, one of the nominees for Best Animated Short Film was a sad, sweet film called HEAD OVER HEELS (2012) in which an older couple, having drifted apart emotionally, lived in a house which had opposing gravity – the wife lived upside down on the ceiling and the husband on the floor. When I came across the romantic science fiction movie UPSIDE DOWN (2012) starring Jim Sturgess (ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, 2007;CLOUD ATLAS, 2012) and Kirsten Dunst (MELANCHOLIA, 2011; SPIDER-MAN, 2002), I wondered if it was a live-action version of the animated short. It isn’t, though both deal with a couple separated by disparate gravitational forces. Must have been something in the air, last year.
UPSIDE DOWN tells the story of two people, Adam and Eden, who live on different Earth-like planets orbiting each other and sharing the same atmosphere. Each planet has its own gravity which prevents the people of the two worlds from interacting with each other. But more on that in a moment.
First, a warning: if I had simply come across this movie on Netflix (where it is available via streaming) and decided to try it out, I’d have turned it off during the first five minutes thinking it was the worst movie ever made. That’s because the opening narrative sequence, where Sturgess’s character Adam explains the three basic rules of life between the two planets, is terrible. Terrible. I like Jim Sturgess, he’s made some great movies, but his narration in the opening sequence is so sickly-sweet, so cloyingly child-like, that it makes you think this might be a film made for kids, and very young ones at that. But the film isn’t as bad as the opening implies—in fact it’s quite good, with amazing visuals and plenty of action and romance to make for a pleasant movie. Just bear with the opening narration, and pay attention to its three rules governing the two worlds since this sets up the plot and makes the later story easier to follow.
What are these rules? First, the gravity of a planet affects only matter from that planet, including people. Even though the two worlds practically sit on top of each other and share the same atmosphere, the gravity of the opposing planet has no effect on someone from the other. In fact, if they stand on the opposing planet without holding themselves down, they’ll fall “up” to their own world. Secondly, if matter from one world comes in contact with matter from the other for too long, it will burn. Because of this, it is illegal for matter from an opposing world (called Inverse Matter) to be taken to your own. Everything, and every one, must be kept separate. Wherever they do come together (such as a massive office tower which spans both worlds), elaborate cooling systems are required to keep everything from going up in flames. The third rule…. Actually, I forget what the third rule is. Maybe I smooshed the three rules into two above. Don’t make me go back and listen to the opening narration again.
The two planets are known as Up Top, a Utopian society of wealth and prosperity, and Down Below, a poor planet subjugated by the corporate rulers of Up Top for their natural resources, where the residents struggle to survive in their poverty day-to-day.
If this sounds familiar, it has been done many times before in films and literature, most recently in ELYSIUM (2013) and the remake of TOTAL RECALL(2012). In ELYSIUM, Earth is in ruins, populated by poor workers who serve the wealthy elite who live on a massive, orbiting space station. In TOTAL RECALL, the Earth is ravaged by… I think it was a nuclear war… leaving England and Australia as the only habitable land masses. England hosts the wealthy and Australia hosts the poor who travel in a long subway system through the core. Whereas ELYSIUM started out as a promising dystopian science fiction film, it digressed horribly in the last twenty minutes into improbable and downright silly action sequences. TOTAL RECALL started as an improbable action film out of the starting gate and never lets up (in other words you went in expecting this and were not disappointed). UPSIDE DOWN is, at its core, a love story set in an improbable universe of dueling gravity. Though there are plenty of cool visuals and interesting sci-fi elements, especially how the main character tries to overcome the laws of physics in his universe to find his true love, the film never strays from this basic premise. If mushy romantic stories, even those set in “space” don’t appeal to you, then UPSIDE DOWN is probably not your bag. But I liked it.
One day, as a boy visiting his Great Aunt Becky (Kate Trotter, LOST GIRL television series, 2010-2012), young Adam learns about a secret family recipe for “pink powder” cultivated from bees which pollinate from flowers on both worlds. She uses this to make floating pancakes, unaware that this combination of elements comingling between the two worlds has potential to revolutionize both. While out gathering more pink pollen for his aunt, Adam climbs to the highest peak of the highest mountain in the area, and meets a young girl walking along a path on the other world. These two points are so close to each other they can have a conversation with each other by shouting “up.” Jump ahead to Adam and Eden as teenagers. They’ve been meeting secretly for years at this very spot. Using a rope, he pulls Eden “down” to his planet and they make out while she is held to his world by laying under an overhanging rock. Since what they are doing is illegal, and since these two peaks are so close together, the government (or the Trans-World company, which seems to be the primary employer of the two worlds and has the government authorities under their control) has regular patrols with orders to shoot anyone found in this restricted zone. Needless to say, things get messy as they begin shooting (badly) at our hapless couple and Eden falls back to her own world. Adam thinks his girlfriend is killed in the fall and, to make matters worse, his aunt is arrested later and he never sees her again.
Ten years later, Adam is eking out an existence at a small workshop run by his friend and employer Albert (Blu Mankuma – 2012 (2009)). Aside from doing odd jobs which mostly involve staring at small objects and poking them with pointy things, Adam is trying to develop an anti-wrinkle cream using his family’s secret pink powder. Since part of the ingredients involves pollen from the other planet, it will try to follow its old gravity upwards. He’s hoping to use this characteristic to make wrinkles smooth out. This is no more earth-shattering than using the formula to cook floating pancakes. When he sees his long-lost girlfriend on TV promoting the all-powerful Trans World Corporation, he decides to get a job there to develop his anti-wrinkle cream using their unlimited resources, and to have an opportunity to contact Eden. Little does he know that she has suffered amnesia since her fall ten years ago and remembers nothing of her prior life. Including him.
Adam’s arrival at the office is where the visuals for UPSIDE DOWN really shine. All floors from the middle of the tower to Down Below are marked at -1, -2, etc. All floors above the middle are 1, 2, etc, with the center floor, level 0, the only place where employees from Up Top work on the same floor as those Down Below. Well, the same level. From Adam’s perspective, the Up Top folks work on the ceiling. If you take a look at the movie poster for UPSIDE DOWN you can see what working on level 0 is like. I wonder what this movie was like in the theaters on the Big Screen. Perspectives keep changing, characters talk to each other from the ceilings, and even on my small screen I had occasional feelings of vertigo. Adam befriends a co-worker from Up Top named Bob Boruchowitz, a middle-aged and gruff employee played with frumpled perfection by Timothy Spall (SWEENY TODD, 2007, and most of the HARRY POTTER films, where he played the rat-like Peter Pettigrew). I particularly liked Spall’s character. In a story where everyone Up Top looks down on our poor hero with noses that are already in the air, Bob is a cordial breath of fresh air. And their friendship becomes more and more entangled in Adam’s quest to meet Eden.
If you know me, you know I’m not big on plot rehashing, but Adam does comes up with a way to get to the upper floors to see his lost love. By squirreling away samples of Inverse Matter, he makes a suit and shoes with hidden pockets which conceal these slabs of metal, enough to weigh him “up” to the other world. Problem is, he can only wear this suit for a couple of hours before everything starts to burn up. This gimmick is key to keeping the plot interesting and offering plenty of perils for Adam to overcome, not to mention a little humor. It’s also a good reason for one of the best effects of the movie mid-way through, when Adam jumps into a lake, then falls up into the sky and down into a corresponding lake in his own world.
The action sequences are brief and decent enough, though I will admit one climactic “chase” scene with Adam and Eden running from authorities through the remains of an old dirigible was a little over-the-top. The movie makes much use of strings to simulate the opposing draws of gravity, and sometimes it works, sometimes it looks a little bit Mary Poppinsy. One nice trick, however, is drawn from an old Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling number in which the camera is fixed to the floor of a room that rotates until the floor becomes the ceiling and the character seems to be defying gravity. The first time Adam changes into his Inverse Matter suit in a small storage room, they use this technique well as his orientation changes from the floor to ceiling while the camera remains fixed on the floor.
This is writer/director Juan Solanas’s first feature film, and overall I think he did well. Someone should have pointed out the annoyance factor of the opening narrative, but aside from this, the end result was a beautiful, clever story. The science of the film, naturally, is questionable, but again it’s not as critical to the main storyline as the romance. Both Jim Sturgess and Timothy Spall gave strong performances with their roles; ironically, both British actors have “American” accents throughout. I usually like Kirsten Dunst, who lately has mostly worked the Indie film circuit, but I was less than impressed with her performance here. Her Eden was not very convincing, either alone or with Sturgess. Maybe they simply had no chemistry, who knows? But this shouldn’t detract, much, from enjoying the film.
To wrap up, the film has shortcomings, not nearly as much as you might think during the first five minutes. Go in expecting a sweet Romeo and Juliet story set in a unique, visually stunning universe, with interesting – if not overly plausible – science governing all, and you won’t be disappointed. Aside from the Oscar-nominated animated short HEAD OVER HEELS, you won’t find another story quite like it.
.five of out lovers floating three it give I.