Mars et Avril (2012)

directed by Martin Villeneuve
Canada
90 minutes
2.5 stars out of 5
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I'm gonna be a little bit salty with this one because I don't remember the last time I posted a review of a movie I didn't actually like.

I'm not going to try and challenge any of this movie's visual aspects, because it's basically perfect in terms of effects and the overall look of it. It was made for about $2.5million which sounds like an astronomical amount of money but I'm being told that considering the scope of it, that's not much- in fact, the director has a TED Talk on how he made something so expansive for such a small amount. I'm even hesitant to mention that its aesthetic isn't my personal favorite because it looks so good that it could have been done in a totally different way, but as long as the effects were basically the same, I would have had no problem with it.

The problem I had with this is that it is, to be blunt, insufferable. I was trying to goad myself out of believing that because it didn't have to be. But good lord did it seem to be. I was thinking hard about it and I truly do believe that this is a pretentious film because I know of so many people who do the same things with art and music that people in Mars et Avril do, who explore strange concepts and avant-garde formats just like this, and they don't come off even a quarter as artsy-fartsy and irritating as these characters do. These people act so superior just because they make experimental art. 

I'm not interested in watching sci-fi movies where the upper class invents more and more far-fetched methods to elevate itself. I'm tired of seeing movies where the status quo is upheld but because the rich have hover limos instead of regular ones, it's somehow futuristic and deep. I hate the flippancy with which this treats art like it's a trump card you can use to make yourself instantly superior to everyone else. Artists are everyone else, it's just that when rich people decide to make art they suddenly believe their scribblings and farting into a microphone are worth more than other peoples' entire lives.