Jamie passion and passionfruit!

This is a film from the line of Wim Wender's "Until the End of the World" or "Gattaca" or "1984".  The world is divided into two - a part with pristine skyscrapers and all mod cons which is controlled by giant corporations.  You have to have 'cover' to be there and these permits are gold dust.  The rest live 'afuera' or outside in dirty, desert-like, resource scarce zones parched by relenting sun.  The creation of this futuristic world by British director Michael Winterbottom and based on a scinece fiction novel is excellent and is filmed in a futuristic Shanghai and a slightly more uneven Dubai.  We even have a sort of universe speak mixing various languages - English, Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic and Chinese.  The problem is that the story, while more or less convincing is not portrayed with enough spice and interest to sustain us and in the end we do not really care for the characters.  Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton do the honours but the real star is the setting and the gimmicks.  Interesting to see but perhaps not worthy the various festival nominations it had.

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