movie review - IO
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is an interesting if challenging film about a lone young lady trying to find a solution to a major environmental catastrophe on a (very) dying planet Earth. She spends equal amounts of time working on her research and surviving through growing things and raising bees. It becomes clear that she's trying to use her various horticultural skills to find a way for humans to survive on the planet. To supplement both, she goes into the low-land areas (primarily the city of Los Angeles) and finds books and materials. From the outset, we learn that Earth is completely uninhabitable, with a toxic layer of smoggy fumes now occupying the low elevations. With the last evacuation shuttles leaving shortly, we get that it's time to do or die.
With no one to keep her company - she's also maintaining a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend - who has evacuated to distant Io, the moon of Jupiter. She plays recordings from her famous scientist father as her only other form of "interaction". Then a man in a balloon lands on her property in search of her famous father. What follows is a curiously awkward relationship of sorts, and it's here that the movie really falls apart. I felt like both characters were lying to each other (and/or themselves) and I'm not really sure why it comes out like this but it seems like neither actor was interested.
The movie never really recovers, sadly.
Not recommended.