Luc Besson's Lucy had a lot of promise, conceptually, but the entire execution of the film was woefully underwhelming and wholly frustrating. It's one of those movies where at the end of it you start picking apart all of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the plot.
It's something upon which I occasionally ponder: what would Lucy have been like had it been less a jumbled, ideologically-driven mess and more saturated and honest in its themes?
Well, you get Technotise - Edit i Ja.
(Sorry it took nearly three paragraphs to get there, but I'm there gosh darn-it!)
The animated film basically works on an almost identical concept to Lucy and the action sci-fi flick Upgrade. I don't want to give anything away for those of you who haven't seen it, but Technotise is more philosophical sci-fi rather than action sci-fi.
It has a couple of action scenes that are fairly well animated and quite engaging, but they're far and few between.
Majority of the film is about a college student name Edit that has a rather technophysio experience thanks to a formula from an autistic genius, an illegally obtained chip, and a trip through a lab being funded to scope the future.
The animated Serbian film dabbles in a lot of interesting concepts of futurism, from robotic pets and electronic pleasure clubs, to hoverboard races and cyborg DJs. It's definitely on the higher-end of the sci-fi spectrum than some fanfare out there, but at the same time a lot of the technology still seems grounded in some measure of possibility.
The real hook for the film, though, syncs up with the constantly flirting topic of cybernetic ontology... or artificial beings. The film doesn't really come down one way or another on the topic, it just presents them and then leaves the viewer to ponder them.
Unlike Lucy the film doesn't deify its lead, nor does it elevate her to hero status. Quite the contrary. Despite delving into some fascinating subject matter, Edit is never given a pedestal or portrayed as being too big to fail or too strong to fall. She's a rather realized character in a tale told both with exquisite vision and artistic originality.
Yes, the film can be rough around the edges given its limited budget but you can tell it was made with a lot of heart and passion, something missing from a lot of other bigger budget flicks produced these days.
Anyway, I could write almost all day about Technotise, but I'll simply say that much like Uma História de Amor e Fúria or Mind Game, this is definitely a film to watch if you enjoy something both visually engaging and philosophically thought-provoking.
