A mainstay of science-fiction, by this point in time, is often in how it manages the human consequences of scientific change. Risks, dilemmas, emotional impacts: what awaits mankind when it truly breaks free of the bounds which constrain it? Well, we go a step further in Tropic (2022), to the extent that it’s not exactly a sci-fi at all. Its interaction with a fantastical, sci-fi element never goes in the expected direction. There are some extraordinary circumstances in the story, true, but these don’t really go beyond exacting pressure on an already strained family group. The resulting film is engaging nonetheless, but fans of aliens and spaceships and all that might feel a little hard done by; this is a story about two brothers…
One of whom we encounter in the very opening scene, facing the camera, sitting stoically on the floor of a swimming pool. This is part of astronaut training at a very exclusive, highly competitive facility in France, and brothers Lazaro (Pablo Cobo) and Tristan (Louis Peres) are both training there, vying for a place on an upcoming, long haul space mission. The word ‘colony’ is mooted; we see little of the world beyond, but it seems there’s a great deal at stake here. What we see of the brothers’ early relationship, by the by, sets up the quite odd blend of approaches which come to characterise the film: it’s both very still, and very tense – a kind of dignified adversity. The two young men compete against one another with the usual physical scrapping and name-calling you’d expect, but they are also each quite self-contained when it comes down to it. It’s not likely that they will both make the grade; it’s not likely they will both go into space, as much as they want that.
We get a very slow build up here, following the boys as they travel home to see their mother, Mayra (Marta Nieto) who lives out in the boonies in a relatively deprived part of France; their code-switching between French and Spanish tell us that the family is Cuban by birth, which is coded to mean ‘struggling immigrants’ here, with Mayra commenting early and often on how hard she has struggled to get the boys where they need to be, working a succession of low-security, low-wage jobs. But they’re a happy unit, with a good life together: in and around the time spent at the academy, the boys discuss their first loves, their hopes and dreams; they practice, too, sinking to the bottom of a nearby lake to time how long they can stay there. Well, space travel is changing: we note that a speaker at the Academy describes voyages taking decades, so they will need younger astronauts as a consequence.
However, it seems that the brothers won’t have to wait to get into space for its issues and problems to find them: as they hang out at the lake, something bizarre crashes to earth, actually landing in the lake itself. Tristan tries to warn his brother, but whatever has landed fills the water with an ominous green glow, and before he himself can get out, he is significantly injured by whatever-it-is, which – and there’s no other way to say this – disables him, both disfiguring him and damaging his brain, so that he is effectively a different person, barely speaking, struggling to walk, prone to catastrophic rages.
However, the film moves largely away from Tristan at this point; we follow Laz, whose loss of the brother he knew is agonising, whatever the nature of its cause. He loses his edge and his purpose; continuing to strive for excellence feels wrong now. He’s not unequivocally sympathetic, though, and initially has a real horror of his brother’s new friends with disabilities (perhaps a little unbelievably, it turns out that Tristan’s new support unit is right opposite the space academy, sharing a lot of the same space). Laz can be cruel and dismissive; the brutality of his treatment of his brother is a hard watch, but it’s plausible, because people are certainly not always nice, and perhaps we should be more honest about how anger can accompany loss.
That said, all of the focus on Laz’s plight can feel ponderous, and perhaps also because it’s hard not to expect something else, some different outcomes. We’re onto Chapter IV (yes, we have chapters) before we move much beyond pure, introspective misery, which almost halts the narrative, setting aside a lot of the momentum around getting a place on the voyage. Some of the running time is eaten up with what feel like bizarre inclusions, too: it’s incredibly French that the prospective astronauts have to take a compulsory Philosophy class, even if the film itself is quite philosophical. Perhaps it’s a little anti-intellectual of me, but I can’t really see how knowing your way around Nietzschean nihilism would help you much, if you were careening towards Jupiter at some pace.
But perhaps the film’s biggest issue is how, after setting up what looks like a science fiction element (the impact of a mysterious object from space) it more or less parks this plot point. Tristan gets disfigured – becomes a monster of sorts (via his physical appearance and the loss of his old self) but then moves to the periphery. We get little from his perspective, even accepting that his perspective has been reduced by circumstance – and any expectations around the object from space are not picked up. His story looks like it might resemble I Am The Doorway, then when that’s off the cards, perhaps the brilliant Honeymoon or A Banquet, but in fact, this plot point, which seemed to be key, isn’t developed. It’s simply an element of pressure to exert upon the brothers, but upon Laz in particular, which in many respects is puzzling, a strange decision, even taking into account that Tristan’s condition reduces his capacity to tell his story.
That all being said, I enjoyed the performances by all of the Guerrero family members, and there were some effective moments in amongst the film’s elective slow-burn approach. If you like your sci-fi so experimental and oblique that you have to look for its elements from within a deeply personal story, or else if you’re happy for the sci-fi elements to suggest a tantalising frame, then this could be for you.
Tropic (2022) is coming to digital on December 19th.