Review: Realive

Best known for his Alejandro Amenábar-directed screenplays Abre los ojos and The Sea Inside, Mateo Gil takes his second turn behind the camera in the Spanish-produced, English-language drama, Realive.

Flitting back and forth between three different time periods, the film centers on Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes), a successful commercial artist who learns that he has terminal cancer. Much to the objections of his on-again, off-again true love Naomi (Oona Chaplin), he decides to get himself cryogenically frozen in the hopes that he can be revived one day and rid of his illness. The only hitch is that he must commit suicide in order to ensure that his body remains as unravaged as possible by the cancer.

Fast forward to 2084 when the Prodigy Health Corporation has followed through on their claim of being "the world's most successful regeneration program" by resurrecting Marc. Marc is actually the program's first viable product - a Frankenstein monster-like amalgamation of cloned tissue and bio-robotic enhancements - and the team, led by Dr. Victor West (Barry Ward) is intent on ensuring that they help him gain enough strength to become presentable to their sponsors. The weakened Marc is assigned Elizabeth (Charlotte Le Bon), whose mission it is to tend to his emotional and physical needs. The world may not have changed too much from Marc's time, but the attitudes on sex have - sex is viewed as a social function rather than associated with romantic love.

Naturally, Marc realises that this chance at a second and longer life is not as he expected. Umbilically attached to a "mother" that controls his vital organs, Marc spends most of his time building up his strength and using a "memory writer," a VR-like device that allows him to reflect upon and record past memories to be used for public consumption. It's in immersing himself in those memories that he questions his decision. Is his life now really the life he wanted? Should he have simply used the year he had left to finally be with Naomi?

Unfortunately, Hughes' performance is too close to comatose for audiences to develop any interest in his dilemma. Gil does his tale no favours with an aimless narrative and characters that are sketchy at best. Chaplin, who is an arresting presence, is especially saddled with a flat, one-note, and often shrill character. Le Bon, another compelling beauty, equally struggles to overcome Elizabeth's blandness.

It's truly a shame as there are some interesting themes at play here. Realive does possess a stylishly sterile aesthetic that belies its alleged $7 million budget, though that same financial constraint may be the reason for Marc's barely there interest in the outside world of 2084.

Realive

Directed by: Mateo Gil

Written by: Mateo Gil

Starring: Tom Hughes, Charlotte Le Bon, Oona Chaplin, Barry Ward, Julio Perillán, Rafael Cebrián