Upside Down
Juan Solanas
The story: Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst) live on a planet with dual gravity. She lives in rich and prosperous Up and he lives in the hardscrabble world of Down. They meet and gradually fall in love when they are young but are forcibly separated. Ten years later, Adam searches for a way to reach Eve in her world.

Think you are facing some tough obstacles in your relationship?
Thank your lucky stars, or planet, that you are not Adam. Because in his case, it is something as elemental as gravity that is keeping him from the love of his life.
The sci-fi twist to this romance is a promising one and the film starts off by listing the rules of the planet’s gravity.
Essentially, they point the way to how he will eventually cross over into her world.
Writer-director Juan Solanas (Northeast, 2005) has a keen eye when it comes to establishing the aesthetics of the film.
So we get gorgeous scenes of Up suspended above Down, like a not-quite
reflection in the sky. There is also a mega corporation, TransWorld, which has a massive building which links the two worlds.
And right in the middle where Up and Down meet is a spectacular office level with no ceilings but two floors occupied by cubicles and workers, one hanging right over the other.
Unfortunately, gee-whiz visuals alone are not enough to sustain the story.
An early scene in which Adam and Eden meet as a result of hearing each other just seems silly. Okay, I can buy a planet with two gravities, but that does not mean that sound can just willy-nilly break the laws of physics in the way it travels.
The bigger problem is that not enough happens, and not at a fast enough pace, to keep the film interesting.
It is a pity given that Jim Sturgess (Across The Universe, 2007, and One Day, 2011) is so likable when he plays the earnest romantic Adam that you want to root for him.
Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia, 2011), meanwhile, is wasted in her role as there is little for Eden to do.
And there is not quite enough chemistry in this pairing to have the audience fully invested in what happens.
Upside Down actually contains the sketch of a more intriguing film.
There is something of the dystopic sci-fi flick here in the fraught, exploitative relationship between Up and Down.
In it, there is an echo of the uneasy real-world relationship between the Northern hemisphere and the South.
Also, the film’s resolution, even if not fully persuasive, justifies the biblical naming of the characters.
Solanas has some interesting ideas, but they do not come to fruition here, certainly not enough to turn your world upside down.
(ST)