Immortal, Illegal and Fattening

I can see how some people could get confused by Immortal. It's pretty off the wall - It takes place in a 22nd-century dystopian steampunk NY full of mutants and body mods, with an Egyptian pyramid hovering overhead and Central Park a frigid alien Intrusion Zone.

The plot involves Horus, an Egyptian immortal from the pyramid coming to the city to impregnate a human woman, the blue-lipped Jill (who cries blue tears, has no memory, is telepathic and is probably not human). He does this by co-opting the body of the dissident Nikopol, who has been in cryostasis for 30 years.

There are subplots about Jill's alien mentor, John, who keeps his face wrapped like a black mummy and wears a trenchcoat like everyone else in the city. There's a fat evil senator and his beautiful assistant or puppetmaster. There's the evil Eugenics Corp., and their sympathetic doctor, played by Charlotte Rampling. A series of murders and the police detective investigating. Probably some other stuff. I can see how this is confusing.

But not if you completely ignore the story and just go with the visuals. I'm sure that's what the filmmakers did. This is written and directed by comic artist Enki Bilal, based on a series of graphic novels, and it shows. The backgrounds are all or mostly computer animated, and so are most of the characters. Only Nikopol, Jill and Rampling's doctor are filmed as actors, rather than being animated. Actually, that's a little disorienting, because the real actors have a very different texture than the animated ones. But - whether it makes sense or not, it always looks cool.

Still, what this movie is really about is art direction, pure and simple. In that way, it is similar to last week's Babylon A.D. In fact, they have a lot in common: Gritty post-apocalytic dystopia, McGuffin girl gets pregnant, Charlotte Rampling (she was the bad guy in B.A.D.). There are also hints of Fifth Element, for instance, the retro-forties-look flying cars.

In conclusion, it's another one of those movies. Not the greatest - about like Babylon A.D. I like this kind of movie, but I wish they were better.

A close relative of this type of movie has the female lead as the action hero, not McGuffin - like Aeon Flux orUltraviolet. Maybe I should be watching more of those.