Review: Vesper

Film: Vesper (2022)
Directors: Kristina Buožytė, Bruno Samper
Starring: Raffiella Chapman, Richard Brake, Eddie Marsan, Rosy McEwen
Soundtrack: Dan Levy
Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopian

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve got a soft spot for dystopian sci-fi, especially the biology-inspired subgenre. Bonus points if it looks utterly dismal and/or is set in some desolate Eastern European landscape (it must be growing up during the Cold War). With that in mind, I turn to the 2022 Lithuanian-French-Belgian film Vesper.

Directed by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper, the film takes place in a seemingly not-too-distant future (at least, it feels that way at the moment), in a world where crops have been depleted and society has broken down. The classic dystopian tropes of the haves and have-nots play out in a clash of parallel worlds. The lower classes, who are essentially living in semi-medieval conditions, toil in the mud for seeds and wreckage, while the oligarchy (largely unseen) inhabit the citadels—encapsulated cities that resemble giant octopuses—which are only ever seen from afar.

The story follows Vesper (Raffiella Chapman), a 14-year-old girl with a gift for biohacking. She lives with her father, Darius (Richard Brake), who is confined to his bed, paralysed after a war injury. We are told that Vesper’s mother ran away to join the Pilgrims, a mysterious group of veiled figures who silently scavenge in the post-apocalyptic no man’s land that is their world. Though bedridden, Darius uses a drone with a childish drawing of a face daubed onto it as a proxy for his body, allowing him to travel with and protect Vesper. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of high-tech elements, such as Darius’ drone, with the rough cabin where they dwell. The daubed face is a touch of brilliance, giving the floating orb a sense of personality and playfulness, reminiscent of dodgy 60s/70s British sci-fi productions.

Vespers creations

Darius’ brother, Jonas (Eddie Marsan), lives nearby on some kind of farm. It’s never clearly stated, but it seems Jonas has either fathered a good number of children or is running some kind of children’s home. Either way, his role is that of a crooked exploiter, selling “his children’s” (as he calls them) blood to the people of the citadel. It’s never explained why, but I enjoyed the vampiric subtext—the rich quite literally sucking the blood of the poor. In a world where millionaire biohackers like Bryan Johnson infuse their own children’s blood, it cuts pretty close to the bone. Jonas is also in possession of citadel creatures known as Jugs—strange, pale, genetically engineered humanoids who are essentially slaves, programmed to follow orders. There’s a harrowing scene in which one of Jonas’ ‘children’ is strong-armed into killing a Jug, or “put it out of its misery,” as Jonas coldly puts it.

The technology is all more or less biological in either appearance or structure: power comes from a gooey black liquid described as bacteria. Though the outside of the drone is metallic and spherical, the interior is slimy and brain-like, as we see when Jonas sabotages his brother’s drone.

Things take a turn when a citadel plane crashes near the shack. In a strangely beautiful and serene scene, Vesper discovers the half-dead body of Camellia (Rosy McEwen) being fed on by various plant/insect lifeforms. Vesper rescues Camellia, who has been separated in the crash from her father, Elias, and brings her home—much to Darius’ discontent.

Vesper dreams of working in a lab in the citadel, to which her father warns, “You don’t know the cost of dreams.” She wants to help Camellia return to the citadel and hopes that she will take her and her father with her.

As with all good sci-fi, class war is at the root of Vesper. There is a sense that the people of the citadel are inhuman, cruel, and vampiric—slavers who have depleted the crops, torn the land apart, and toxified it with genetically modified organisms. It is they who hoard the wealth (seeds, in this case, which are codified) away from the people on the ground. And, of course, it is Vesper who is tasked with restoring the balance.

The world-building in Vesper is second to none, and the plant life is especially well-designed. The soundtrack by Dan Levy is excellent too, though I can’t say the final track was my cup of tea.