‘Meanwhile On Earth’ Review – Jérémy Clapin’s Sci-Fi Family Drama Is A Handsome, Uneven Tale Of Grief

The closest thing to a throughline within le cinéma du Jérémy Clapin is the fascination with disembodiment as both an idea and a predicament. The French writer, director, and animator, best-regarded for his 2019 stunner, I Lost My Body, is nothing if not fascinated with the human condition, particularly when the human in question is forced to operate outside of themselves, to consider the nature of the world from an unfamiliar position, one that is so close yet so very far and foreign from that of their original anatomy. Clapin’s aforementioned triumph, which was nominated for – and should have won – Best Animated Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards, is the story of a severed hand that walks itself over, under, and through the depths of Paris to reunite with its body. Beautiful and twisted, this tale of a hand that possesses a mind of its own manages to transcend its grisly premise by becoming a poetic work about loss, particularly the state of acceptance we – or, in this case, our limbs – must reach in order to find peace when that loss occurs.

The same could be said for Clapin’s shorts, which include 2004’s Une histoire vertébrale (“Backbone Tale”), which fixates on a lonely man whose neck is permanently tilted forward, forcing him to stare at the ground, and 2008’s Skhizein, a 13-minute film about a man who must adapt to living exactly 91 centimeters from himself after being struck by a meteorite. These are different kinds of disembodiment than what I Lost My Body imagines, of course; the main character in Une histoire vertébrale even remains inside his own body. But it’s not the sort of existence that people are used to nor should be confined to. 

Such a predicament might be precisely what drew Clapin to Meanwhile on Earth, a film that feels like the natural next step in the director’s thematic journey. His first live-action work, instead of removing a limb or a soul from a living body, Meanwhile on Earth deals with death, specifically, what happens when one’s soul communicates with its relatives from beyond. Three years prior to the events of the film, the Martens family experienced a loss, one that hit Elsa (Megan Northam) the hardest of all. Her older brother, Franck (voiced by Sébastien Pouderoux), traveled to space on an exploratory mission and never returned. The assumption is that he perished, and in his memory, his hometown has erected a statue in his honor, one that Elsa repeatedly defaces with neon green spray paint. Everyone knows it’s her doing, which is exactly why she keeps it up, no matter how many times the paint is removed: Her struggle to carry on in the wake of his disappearance can only be counteracted by way of an outward display of ownership. Whether that possession is of his memory or of their relationship doesn’t matter as much as the fact that he was her brother, and anyone else’s grief couldn’t possibly match her own. 

This sadness has permeated every aspect of Elsa’s life, from her personal relationships – of which there are precious few outside of those with coworkers and her parents – and her dreams, literally speaking. Franck strongly encouraged Elsa to attend art school, a leap she took almost solely at his behest, and following his disappearance, she gave it up in favor of a job at an end-of-life care facility that has slowly evolved into an excuse for her to never do anything with the life she was once eager to build. That is, until she hears a voice emanating from an antenna on a hillside. It’s Franck, or at least it sounds like him, and he informs Elsa that an extraterrestrial authority is holding him, unwilling to let him go unless she cooperates with their demands. In a cross between great relief and sincere panic, Elsa obliges. Who among us wouldn’t believe the sound of our dearly departed sibling’s voice, mysteriously telling us that they could come back to us if only we agree to help an alien entity make its own way onto our planet?

Once that very entity, embodied by the distorted voicework of Dimitri Doréc, drowns out Elsa’s brother’s cries and has her insert a futuristic, orb-like earbud into her ear, Meanwhile on Earth rambles forward at a far tenser rate and tone, more akin to that of a science-fiction thriller than anything Clapin has handled before. The returns are varied, as to be expected. Northam’s performance as a woman under duress from the intermittent screeching sounds of an alien in her ear, one that continues to urge her to perform acts that range from unheard of to unspeakable, is what drives the film’s plot more than anything. It’s the sort of dominant role that every film like this one needs – not that it’s playing on a remotely similar field, but it’s a performance that seems to exist in the vein of Kirsten Dunst’s turn in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia – and Northam commands the screen as though, like Elsa, the life of a loved one depends on it. 

Can the same be said for Meanwhile on Earth’s handling of its own vision? The issues are less with its ideas, many of which are familiar and well-intended, than with Clapin’s execution, particularly as the presence of the extraterrestrial force becomes more invasive and unbearable for Elsa and those in her orbit. Elements of shock-and-awe horror invade the brooding sci-fi stasis the film had otherwise been maintaining for its already-brief runtime, and while the disruption is alarming, it feels out of place despite it fitting with the main character’s furthering descent into madness. If anything, Clapin seems to have become disembodied himself with Meanwhile on Earth, a filmmaker who is looking at his own potential from afar, unable to fully grasp control of his next step. It’s as if he’s 91 centimeters from recognizing exactly what his film can say about grief, yet operating solely with the promise of its premise. Perhaps angling his neck upward a touch would aid the future effort, even if this one has the makings of something great, but not the end product required to match what he’s achieved before.

Meanwhile On Earth is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Metrograph Pictures.