There’s a slippery magic that can occur between two strangers. At first, they are nothing to each other, except perhaps a means to an end. Maybe they are even slightly repelled by each other. Then something flicks, and they are not just strangers anymore. They are people who, for better or worse, can see truly each other, even if they never see each other again.
This is the story at the core of Anima, which has a sci-fi setup that might suggest a cold world of disconnected folk. The story begins with Beck (Alien: Earth‘s Sydney Chandler), a young woman with a bob that’s best described as retro-futuristic while French. Though trained as an engineer, Beck’s lack of people skills has her searching for work. When a company that promises it can upload human consciousness into a cloud system is hiring, she’ll take any job they’ve got on offer. Little does she expect it’ll be a life-changing journey.
Anima is an entrancing road-trip movie.
An unappealing entry-level gig is how Beck meets Paul (Shōgun‘s Takehiro Hira), a man who’s made his fortune on buttons (the clothing kind, not the pushing kind). Paul is a client of this consciousness-cloud storage company; she’s been hired to pick him up and drive him to his final appointment. There, he will, according to the sales pitch, be copied over to a computer drive and then euthanized.
The instructions Beck is given from a formal executive (Birth/Rebirth‘s Marin Ireland) are simple: Drive him here and see that he has a good last meal. But Paul throws a curve into their journey by demanding they make a few stops along the way.
See, before he goes, Paul wants to make amends. Well, maybe “amends” isn’t the right word. But he has some regrets to get off his chest, and Beck will be his sidekick whether she likes it or not.
Anima is a tale of opposites finding common ground.
At first, Beck regards Paul as a job, perhaps in part so she won’t think too much about what their destination has in store for this soon-to-die man. But as their car ride kicks off, she soon is sneering at him — and understandably so! Sulking in a leather trench coat and business suit, he demands detours, detests the radio, and drags Beck into backyards, shops, and humble homes on his unhinged quest for resolution.
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Along the way, they’ll meet characters who burst with energy neither of these heroes can muster. A poolside vixen with a mouth painted perfectly red and welcoming. An American business colleague who practically cheers at Paul’s arrival. An awkward teen clerk whose hobby is talking to an AI chatbot modeled after a Twin Peaks character. With each encounter, Beck sees who Paul is in contrast to those he’ll leave behind. And in each stop, she reveals a bit of herself too.
Sydney Chandler and Takehiro Hira have a strange but compelling chemistry.
Writer/director Brian Tetsuro Ivie sculpts a story lean yet deep, where small plot points echo across the road trip. A stolen CD plays a song about a broken parent-child bond, allowing Beck and Paul to connect over a shared heartache from opposite sides. Something flips, just like that, and these two are not strangers but friends. So what will that mean for the end of their journey? I wouldn’t dare reveal. But I will say that Chandler and Hira manage each step with a resonating reserve.
In dialogue, they move from crisply rude to hesitantly curious to trippingly warm to achingly vulnerable. Yet despite its themes of life, death, and regret, Anima never falls into suffocating sentimentality or tear-jerking theatrics. Its tone is softer and more elegiac, but never stoic.
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There’s a thrum of yearning reverberating through Ivie’s vision of a not-so-distant future. There, these heroes are often bathed in cool tones, perhaps reflecting the icy exteriors that have been their respective shields. But as they collide with the friends and family of Paul’s life, the palette grows warm, as if to indicate life choices that really could have made the grass greener.
Paul’s early rejection of the radio sets up a soundtrack that is selective, not constant. Sometimes the only music is the whispering of a river, or the hum of the car speeding down the highway. Other times, it’s a deceptively cheery pop song, an artist perhaps singing the feelings neither Paul or Beck can dare to confess.
In the end, Anima is a touching story of human connection in a world where tech suggests we can do without. Moving and meditative, this drama is a ride well worth the taking.
Anima was reviewed out of SXSW.
