15/06/2023 - The French director spoke to us about his first feature film, set against a backdrop of Martian colonisation and is competing in Annecy after its initial unveiling in Cannes

(© Hugues Lawson)

Unveiled within the Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéma de la Plage line-up, Mars Express [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jérémie Périn
film profile], the first feature film by French director Jérémie Périn, is screening in the official competition of the 42nd Annecy Animated Film Festival this week. The director shed some light on the genesis of this thrilling science-fiction and detective film, set against a backdrop of artificial intelligence and Martian colonisation.

Cineuropa: Where did you get the idea for Mars Express, a deep dive into the 23rd century, which you co-wrote with Laurent Sarfati ?
Jérémie Périn: Our producer Didier Creste (Everybody On Deck), whom we’d just made the series Lastman with, asked us what we’d like to do next. We suggested a science-fiction film. I felt that there weren’t very many science-fiction films passing comment on our times, but also that there weren’t as many detective films along the lines of Privé by Robert Altman, for example, or Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. So we agreed that we’d do a blend of both, starting out with a bit of pragmatic digging to work out what this future world would consist of. Simply recognising what exists around us today and what we’re heading towards immediately highlighted themes relating to robots, space travel and the colonisation of the planets around us, in particular. When we started writing, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk were already totally lost in their Martian, space station utopias.

What research did you carry out to ensure your Martian colony of the future was credible?
We went to see planetologist Sylvain Bouley, who specialises in the planet Mars, and her colleague François Costar. They were kind enough to answer our questions, especially aimed at finding out where on Mars would be the most plausible location for a colony. Mars is already totally mapped out and they advised us to position the colony in a network of canyons called Noctis Labyrinthus: it was a good spot if we needed to cover the colony with a dome to protect inhabitants from radiation. We also felt that the first settlers should live underground whilst this ceiling infrastructure was being built. That’s why, in the film, when the detective visits the underground areas of Noctis, there are ancient traces of urbanism.

Artificial intelligence is central to the story. You use a detective story to tackle existential questions.
The theme was born out of the writing process, and we focused on questions relating to artificial intelligence, the relationship such machines might have with humans, and how the latter would react to the total liberation of artificial intelligence. Often, in films or stories exploring this subject-matter, we’re faced with artificial intelligence “beings” who dream of being equal to humans or who want to get rid of humans. We took a different path, whilst also playing on those menacing false leads which the viewer knows so well.

Your private detective is a woman.
Firstly, Lastman was full of male characters who fight, it was a real show of virility, and I was a bit tired of it. So I decided that I’d choose a female character to provide a different viewpoint. Then I noticed that, in my private detective films of reference, the archetypal private detective was always a man. I didn’t feel there was any real need for that, so I decided to change it. Straight away, a number of other film noir archetypes vanished from my movie too, like the character of the femme fatale. So it was a way of revitalising an incredibly coded genre.

What was your stance in terms of the film’s graphics, which are incredibly rich but never ostentatious?
That was precisely my intention. Emotionally speaking, I wanted people to be in this universe, as if they’d been teleported there. The mise en scène isn’t aimed at offering viewers a touristic experience either: we follow these characters who are already familiar with this world, and we have to get by and understand this world through them; they don’t explain to viewers where they’re going or what a particular building is. There aren’t any picture postcard moments; it contributes towards the sense of richness and non-demonstrativeness, and it has a knock-on effect on the animation and the drawing, too. More than realism, what I try to achieve is an impression of reality, something which makes us forget we’re watching an animated film.

(Translated from French)