Who
knew the future would be so uncertain? It turns out to be quite different, yet
maddeningly the same. Go figure. This is especially frustrating for Marc Jarvis,
because he will have to live in it. The first cryogenically frozen terminally
ill patient to be successfully revived and cured experiences buyer’s remorse in
Mateo Gil’s Realive (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
It
was tragic bad timing for Jarvis to get a one-year cancer diagnosis. His
hipster advertising agency was thriving and he was finally settling into a
healthy long-term relationship with Naomi, his former girlfriend several times
over. She quits her job to make the most of what time they have left, but
Jarvis has a different idea. He will technically kill himself before the
disease can ravage his body, so he can be frozen and presumably revived later.
Apparently, those bucket list items will have to wait—sixty years to be exact.
That
is how long it takes for Jarvis to be defrosted—and boy is he surprised. Thanks
to his precautions, he was a perfect specimen for the restoration process.
However, instead of elation, Jarvis falls into a deep depression. Even
Elizabeth, the pretty RN assigned to monitor his recover and “encourage” him in
ways acceptable in the swinging 2080s, can’t make him forget about Naomi. To
further boost his angst, Jarvis eventually learns Naomi also had herself
deep-frozen, but not in as pristine condition, making her an unlikely contender
for revival anytime soon.
There
are some powerful moments in Realive that
bear comparison to Mark Slutsky’s provocative short film Decelerators. Unfortunately, there is just no getting around the
weakness of Tom Hughes as a lead (de ja vu, anyone?). Instead of brooding
darkly, he just seems to lay about in a funk. It is impossible to believe Naomi
(played by Oona Chaplin, Charlie's granddaughter) and Elizabeth (played by Charlotte Le Bon) could both
be so concerned about his cold porridge personality.
Poor
Chaplin is stuck with an under-cooked character, but she still manages to wring
some poignancy out of the extreme situation she faces. Always reliable, Le Bon
is actually the one who really sells the big emotional payoff, which must have
been quite a challenge playing opposite Jarvis’s bald head and lifeless eyes.
