Robin Wright gives a barn-storming performance in Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman’s ambitious follow-up to his award winning Waltz with Bashir (2008).
Loosely adapted from Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lew’s book ‘The Futurological Congress’, Wright plays a fictional version of herself who is encouraged by her agent Al (Harvey Keitel) to sell her digital likeness to the studios, promising eternal artistic life, in exchange for a small fortune that will allow her to spend the rest of her life with her poorly son Aaron (Kodi Smith-McPhee).
After being scanned into the studio database whilst agreeing to abdicate all artistic control, the film fast forwards 20 years to the end of her contract time where we watch her passing into the parallel world she has co-sanctioned in order to attend a celebratory studio congress.
As she enters, both Wright and the film go animated, jumping into a drug fuelled Sergeant Peppery second life world populated with transfigured versions of Wright’s screen characters.
Folman’s savage attack on the Hollywood studio system brazenly opens up to a further existential exploration of life in the future: free choice, the illusion of truth and the blurring of fact and fiction.