Vesper
After the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, Vesper, a 13-year-old girl struggling to survive with her paralyzed Father, meets a mysterious Woman with a secret that forces Vesper to use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the possibility of a future.
- Released:
- Runtime: 120 minutes
- Genre: Adventure, Drama
- Stars: Edmund Dehn, Matvej Buravkov, Marijus Demiskis, Markas Eimontas, Titas Rukas, Markas Sagaitis, Eddie Marsan, Raffiella Chapman, Rosy McEwen, Richard Brake, Melanie Gaydos
- Director: Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper
Comments
- copepod-82021 - 16 May 2024
Underrated very well done, but not for everyone
This movie is not for everyone. It's.slow paced and has a dark undertone. I'd say it's more of a fantasy than a sci-fi. It is listed as an adventure, but I fail to see how that genre would apply as you basically are just stuck in 2 neighboring houses and a small area between. All in all, it's a very niche movie.
The format is questionable in my opinion. Despite it being slow paced, there are many events which are rushed or not properly addressed. It feels like you jump in halfway into a story and exit it abruptly. As a series I think it would make more sense. The budget is very low, so I can see how it wouldn't be feasible to turn into a series. It's quite unbelievable how well a job they did with such low budget.
The acting in my opinion is very well done and the characters are great. There is a narcisist portrayed by Eddie Marsan in an incredible manner. Not the typical hollywood villain. The world is intruiging to me and I'd love to see more of it.
Spoilers to summarize the setting: It takes place in a dystopian sci fi world. There appears to have been a biological disaster and food is hard to come by. There is sort of feudalistic system with an upper and lower class.
The perspective is from the lower class. They are basically left to starve in the woods. They donate blood to the upper class to buy food. They seem to basically live in anarchy without any order or authority.
The upper class lives in the Citadel. It is implied that the people in the citadel seem to have a ton of wealth and can extend their lifetime and have slaves called Jugs which are.artificial humans. They have access to seeds and technology, but keep it away from the lower class.
To me this is basically indicating how the upper class literally sucks the life out of them and keeps them in a vulnerable suppressed state, just so the upper class can extend their own life and status. - FilmFungi - 28 January 2024
Beautiful on so many levels
This truly is the way that world-building should be done in fiction. Hint at the larger world, give us characters living in a small part of that world, then slowly give us more, piece by piece. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter all built off of that foundation, which is the reason why people were pulled in. So many corners to be explored are only barely glimpsed, and you want to know more.
Vesper pulls off the same trick. I just finished it and I want more stories in this universe. No, not like the Star Wars prequels and sequels where everything is explained, and all the intriguing possibilities are thrown out in favor of "chosen one" storylines. I want to see more about life in those citadels or the nomadic trash collectors. There's an incredible amount of imagination in this movie, from the bigger picture of the landscape down to the smallest details of the plant life. It's all so alien, yet it's simultaneously familiar as a possible future.
The narrative takes its time, and it also respects the intelligence of the audience (something that's becoming rarer these days). As I said, the world is complex, but it tells you what you need to know without exposition. I can understand why some people might be confused if they're trying to multitask while this is on. I can't judge because I started this while I was distracted by a text conversation. The movie had been on for about 15 minutes when I stopped it and started over because I had no clue what was happening. If my eyeballs were on the screen, I had no questions about what was going on.
If I have a criticism, it's that the ending was rushed. About 5 minutes before it was over, I thought it was going to have to have at least another hour to resolve. I would have been fine with that, actually. I found myself wishing it was a series rather than a movie so that it could explore more at a slower pace. The film as a whole seemed only like a first act, especially since the "call to adventure" happened in act 3.
I just wanted more, which I rarely feel while watching a movie. Highly recommend. - rob-broekhof-1 - 3 September 2023
A possible scenario of a future ...
... that might have been germinated /emerging in the minds of the creators from the growing mess the world's in, because there are people that believe that they're "in control". What they're trying to control gets more & more out of controle, especially when their intentions are the opposite of taking care of eachother and the rest of nature. The representation is dark and I guess it's pretty scary for children. At least the child in me, was shocked by some of the scenes. Not just visually, but especially related to what meaning those visuals convey. It's beyond horror. I was glad to see the visuals representing the glimps of hope. Anyway, worth watching & be patient and open for what's coming to you while you're watching this epic. - ceejay-13178 - 28 December 2022
Have Patience And Enjoy A Thoughtful Movie
This is what Sci-Fi is about, the telling of new ideas. It's not all about spaceships, lasers, cyborgs and aliens... although in this case the aliens are nature. GM organisms that have escaped the lab and taken root, a terrible and credible threat.
Whilst this is set in a dystopian future, the oligarchs have sealed themselves in, to protect themselves, whilst Joe Public has to scrape a living outside.... it is the new dark ages.
A great spin on an environmental apocalypse, yet there's no hench hero(ine) spouting cheesy one liners. Initially, only a thirteen year old girl, her dying father and his hovering bot.
Conceptually, this is an original movie and I think the audience's are divided due to it being European. When most Hollywood sci-fi stories are huge budget ADHDfests, this isn't; it's slow, deliberate, atmospheric, with just enough world building to allow your imagination to run riot - without overcompensating for the lowest, common denominator in the audience.
My experience is that Vesper does what many stories in this genre fail to do, make you think about what's happening, what could happen, if it could and so on.
What I would consider a shame, is that some years on, Hollywood takes this and remakes Vesper into one of its vehicles. You never know, in some years this could become a cult classic, as an oft overlooked entry into the genre.
For now, it certainly won't appeal to everybody who likes sci-fi, but will to those wanting a fresh, slow paced, look into a future, then give it go. Leave your brain switched on for this one. - fleetingfox - 24 November 2022
Future oscar winner at the helm of this intellectual sci-fi
Like a live action Miyazaki every frame is a visual wonder. A feast for the eyes and the soul.
The lead character Vesper is played with touching humility and a gentle naturalism by future oscar winner Raffiella Chapman. Her performance as nuanced and intelligent as the best adult actor and yet she is just the tender age of 13.
This intellectual offering is not for the dumb (many of whom seem to have offered their ignorant opinions on here). It is a more thoughtful, slowly unfurling, cry to humanity, to act now to save our planet. I urge you to watch, to savour every beautiful frame and resist the urge to thirst for fast paced action nonsense that comes out of Hollywood. This European scifi is a slow burner and all the better for it. - matt-sickle - 26 October 2022
Good sci-fi
I don't want to spoil anything so I will not even mention anything negative.
I thought it was very good, visually, storytelling and sci-fi wise. The lead young actress did a fantastic job, as did the more supporting roles. I also got a very positive feeling of synergy from the movie Brazil. Not the story or plot but more the design of things.
Some reviews mentioned they wanted more of the world- or back-story. I thought it was about perfectly delivered. Sketched in enough that you can imagine and wonder about it but not heavy-handed.
Other mentioned it is slow and I could see ppl. Thinking that in some cases. However I did not think any of it was filler or just padding out for any reason. Every slow and artsy sort of shot tells you something about the story world. And was very pretty or at least carefully presented in disgusting detail.
Perfect? Nah - but yea it's well worth a watch, IMO. - yusufpiskin - 15 October 2022
Miyazaki
A very watchable dystopian movie from Bruno Samper and Kristina Buozyte.
The most interesting aspect of the film is that either the two directors who also wrote the script of the film or the production designer Henrijs Deicmanis and Raimondas Dicius were heavily influenced by Miyazaki.
The characters in the movie look like they came straight out of the obvious Miyazaki anime.
This is not a bad criticism, it is a choice that fits the texture of the film.
The duo, who had previously filmed Vanishing Waves (2012) together, spent six years on this project and decided at the last minute to shoot the movie in English in order to attract more viewers.
Cinematographer Feliksas Abrukauskas drew on paintings by Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt for inspiration.
Most of the movie was completed without using the green/blue screen, but the drone used in some scenes was helped by cgi... Because the drone used on the set made a lot of noise and the actors and actresses could not focus on their roles.
