Review: The Congress / Cert: TBC / Director: Ari Folman / Screenplay: Ari Folman / Starring: Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Paul Giamatti, Danny Huston, Jon Hamm, Kodi Smith-McPhee, Sami Gayle / Release date: TBC
The Congress is a bold sci-fi film and one of the most original in years. It’s part live action and part animation and directed by Ari Folman, who gave us Waltz with Bashir. Robin Wright stars as herself, a despairing actress agreeing to sell her image and become ‘digitalised’, effectively retiring as the studios age her out of the market.
What starts as something quite interesting in the vein of The Player, a satirical take on cynical Hollywood, starts to change into something rather bizarre. The animated part of the film takes us far into the future after a terrorist attack, plunging Robin and her digital avatar into animated worlds sitting somewhere between a Beatles movie and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Whilst not quite as good as its ambition suggests, with the animated sequence dragging on just slightly too long, yet with eerie acting, sound and dialogue that M. Night Shyamalan or even Shane Carruth might be proud of, The Congress is a welcome addition to both sci-fi and animation and is not easily forgettable.
Expected Rating: 6 out of 10
Actual Rating:
