Yesterday watched two films which were very different but both good in their own way... first up was a kinda, I guess you call it Afro-futurist, type film. Set in Rwanda - again kinda, I don't think the name is ever mentioned, and much of it actually occurs in what appears to be some sort of parallel world type space.
Neptune Frost follows two characters steered by their dreams to escape their respective problems; one as a slave in a mine in which his brother is summarily murdered for pausing on the job to daydream, the other victimised for being trans. Their dreams lead them to Digitalis which seems to be a kind of interdimensional temporary autonomous zone peopled by misfits escaping the war and The Authority's blankly masked enforcers.
It's a very beautiful film, extracting the maximum effect from simply having vividly robed people moving through lush greenery, or at night the colours of even the most mundane canteen glow against the dark, all of this added to by the occasional overlaying of computer graphics representing data.
And the soundtrack is a perfect mixture of bleeps, crackles and beautiful human voices - the soundtrack is important of course cos - I shoulda said - it's a musical, but in the least offensive of ways with background characters subtly becoming the chorus quite differently from the usual way in which everyone suddenly drops what they're doing and piles in with irritating gusto.
For me the second half of the film - in which it seems they felt a need to do something with what they have created and thus you get more expiratory and rather stilted dialogue - is not as good as the first where they are just having fun creating stuff and it all just seems to open up naturally. Still, you should definitely watch it I reckon.
EdIt: this trailer gives you a better idea actually
