‘Mars Express’: Annecy Review

Dir: Jérémie Périn. France. 2023. 88mins

A dogged private detective and a cyborg reconstruction of her dead partner find themselves caught in the crossfire of a conflict between humans and AI in this striking and timely animation. The feature debut from Jérémie Périn is a visually stylish sci-fi that wrestles with some of the questions that we are only just beginning to address about our relationship with AI: how much of a threat does it pose? How do we deal with the loss of human purpose that results from AI job takeover? Does an artificial consciousness have rights?

 Striking and timely animation

The idea of a cyborg/human law enforcement double act is not an entirely new one, and Mars Express bears some thematic resemblance to anime classics such as Ghost In The Shell – not least in the fact that the plotting takes an opaquely philosophical turn in the third act. But Périn (whose previous experience includes the animated TV series Last Man) brings fresh ideas and a level of granular detail to this gritty and downbeat view of the near future, creating a film that could connect with teen and young adult audiences, both at further festivals (the film screens at Annecy having premiered in Cannes’ Cinema De La Plage programme) and potentially theatrically.

The action may take place predominantly on Mars (Earth is now a ‘slum’ for the unemployed) but the personal issues faced by the two central characters are reassuringly down to earth. Aline Ruby (voiced by Léa Drucker) and her robot partner Carlos Rivera (Daniel Lobé) are hired to track down a hacker accused of ‘jailbreaking’ robots and cyborgs – freeing them from the rules and constraints imposed by the human world. But they find themselves sucked into a plot that unfolds in the underbelly of the Martian capital city, Noctis, but has potential consequences that reach much further.

Aline had just about got a handle on her drinking when the stresses of her latest assignment tipped her off the wagon again. Carlos Rivera, a soldier who died in battle, may have got to grips with the fact that his human body was never found and he is now a collection of data uploaded to a robot body with a holographic face. Yet he still struggles with the acrimonious breakdown of his marriage and the fact that his ex-wife refuses to give him access to their daughter. Prosaic human frailties anchor this high-concept adventure that unfolds in a world in which impoverished students rent out their cerebral capacity to ‘brain farms’ and robots have intimate relations with each other through a connection known as ‘resonance’.

Charged with locating a young cybernetics student who has gone missing, Aline and Carlos somewhat reluctantly join forces with Roberta Williams (Marie Bouvet), a hacker who evaded their grasp at the very start of the film. With her help, they are able to uncover a plot that will set the cyborgs and the humans on a path to inevitable conflict, and a secret piece of code that is lurking like a time bomb in the updated operating systems of every AI.

It’s a technically accomplished work. The score is nervy pulsing and electronic, adding to the propulsion and tension of the storytelling. A combination of 2D and 3D animation techniques gives the film a clean, crisp look, and a dispassionate view of a human community on Mars that seems idyllic – just as long as you have the income to pay for it.