Once again, the long arms of Blade Runner and The Matrix are making themselves known in genre filmmaking. Years after Ridley Scott redefined the cityscape of the future and the Wachowski brothers set up the model for the mindscape (both human and machine), those films continue to exert their considerable influence on cinema, sometimes for the good, sometimes not. But Chrysalis, by first-time director Julien Leclercq, taps into a host of other sources in coming up with a genre-mixing mish-mash that references A Clockwork Orange, Richard Linklater's hypnotic A Scanner Darkly, and compatriot Enki Bilal's Immortel. What comes from this chemistry is a film that is as complex, convoluted, and clichd as anything you can imagine. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The story unfolds in a near-future Paris - 2020 to be exact. While in pursuit of a vicious trafficker, nonspecific European cop David Hoffman (Albert Dupontel) loses his wife and partner in a brutal killing to Dimitri Nikolov (Alain Figlarz), who soon becomes the focus of Hoffman's obsession. As is the case with all sci-fi-thrillers of this ilk, Hoffman retreats into himself, neglects his work, and allows his ultra-stylish futuristic apartment to go to pot. It's not long before the escaped criminal is back out on the streets, Hoffman is assigned a new partner, Marie Becker (Marie Guillard), and the chase begins again. The hunt for Nikolov leads Hoffman and Becker to a shady high-tech clinic run by the shady Dr Brugen (Marthe Keller), where some research into the shady Chrysalis memory program is going on. Evidently the clinic also does cutting-edge work in plastic surgery, because Dr Brugen's daughter, Manon (Melanie Thierry), is being treated there to correct the damage done in a terrible car wreck.

Two themes common to films like this lurk beneath the glossy surface. The first deals with memory and its trickle down effects: Where is it "located", how would we use knowledge of a definitive answer to that question, and how exactly does memory affect us - does it, in fact, define us? The second is the deadening of emotion in the face of technology - an idea that never gets old in sci-fi. To that end, Leclercq and company create a future Paris that is completely recognizable to play out those themes against. The dystopian blue-gray (almost monochrome) spaces are punctuated only by the briefest flashes of color, usually blood but occasionally flesh, that remind us that humanity still teems amid the skyscrapers. Contrary to Blade Runner's muggy-feeling black and neon, Chrysalis feels cold and disconnected.

Every other convention viewers would expect from a film like Chrysalis is here: Brooding tough guy? Check. Wounded young girl who may or may not be the key to the entire mystery? Check. New bright-eyed partner who stumbles into the line of fire? Check. Mad scramble by loosely connected nefarious types to control a powerful technology? Check. And the list goes on. However, Chrysalis still has those stunning visuals and an oddly believable atmosphere going for it - courtesy of cinematographer Thomas Hardmeier and production designer Jean-Philippe Moreaux - and those two elements go a long way to giving the film some much needed focus when it threatens to be overwhelmed by action. Figlarz, who also served as the fight coordinator here (and on The Bourne Identity), choreographed the two major fights that are among the strongest scenes in the film, often setting the pace.

The mix of photographic and digitally rendered images are what give Chrysalis the tone - its sense of reality - that ultimately reveals itself to be the film's strongest asset. Nothing in the film is too outlandish to believe, the sets and props straddling an invisible line between standard sci-fi images and those that spring from contemporary reality making them seem possible. Hoffman's kitchen isn't a far stretch from any modern kitchen, but it has just the right amount of hardware to be a step up from Bill Gates' automated house; the kind of house we may all be living in soon. There are no laser guns or rocket cars, just advanced copies of what we already have. It's this connection to the world right now that provides Chrysalis a ticket out of the movie doghouse and possibly a free ride to cult favorite status. Visuals, particularly in science fiction, are most effective when they complement the story but refrain from becoming the story. Leclercq plays a dangerous game of allowing style to battle substance for dominance, and almost wins the fight on more than one occasion. Almost.

Chrysalis opens in Hong Kong on January 24.

(HK Edition 01/23/2008 page4)