Director and Screenplay: Robert Lepage
Cast: Robert Lepage, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Marco Poulin, C�line Bonnier, Greogry Hlady, Yves Amyot, Richard Fr�chette and �rika Gagnon.
Runtime: 105 min. Year: 2003.
Far Side of the Moon (La Face Cachee de la Lune) began life as a one-man show for its creator, the Quebecois actor, writer, and director Robert Lepage. But in this gorgeous, high-definition DV drama, its stage roots are obscured by arresting images in this tale of outer space, sibling rivalry, and one man's struggle to find his destiny. It is a marvelous conceit that provides a showcase for Lepage to shine in dual roles.
Philippe (Lepage) is the type of guy women pray won't hit on them in a bar. It's not that he is 42 and portly, although he is both of those things. But while he is geeky with a large beak of a nose, wire-rimmed glasses, and a mane of hair that could use some judicious cutting, he actually, on first glance, looks sweet and vulnerable. Then he starts talking and his self-absorption is so complete that he sucks all the oxygen right out of the room. Ironically, his doctoral thesis champions the idea that 20th-century space exploration was inspired by narcissism. His advisers are not buying into his theory, as they keep rejecting his thesis. So for now, Philippe ekes out a living as a telemarketer, selling subscriptions over the phone.
At the other end of the economic spectrum is his younger brother, Andre (Lepage again but seeming like a completely different person with a hipster haircut and more confident gait), a vapid TV weatherman who lives in a historical condo in a chic Quebec City neighborhood with his boyfriend Carl (Marco Poulin). The boys' mother (Anne-Marie Cadieux) recently died after a long and horrifying illness�the woman who collected shoes and prided herself on her legs ended up an amputee�bringing the brothers together as it drives them apart. Among other issues, it is left to Philippe to dispose of her estate, but apparently she favored Andre, leaving him her savings of $5,000, despite the fact that it is Philippe who clearly needs the money.
His mother's death has sent Philippe staggering down memory lane as he recalls his childhood and adolescence where his obsession with space began, and also his lifelong fears. Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon coincided with the discovery of a brain tumor that put pressure on Philippe's optic nerve. He recovered, but the bout with cancer left a scar. Where he once might have followed his astronaut heroes into space, instead he is too fearful even to fly. Andre observes that Philippe doesn't make room in his life "for new things to happen," and while he has a point, Philippe is still too invested in old childhood resentments and too contemptuous of the life Andre is living now to pay his brother heed.
But the loss of his mother and his extreme denial in accepting how she died has put Philippe's life off its orbit. He constantly remembers his youth�his love affair with the cosmos, his rivalry with Andre, even his teenage acid trips. And while part of him seems determined to maintain his current status quo of isolation, loneliness, academic rejection, and day jobs he considers beneath him, he allows small openings for change. A chance encounter with a Russian cosmonaut does not pan out the way he had hoped, but offers unexpected opportunities. A contest sponsored by the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute to create a video to beam into space engages him on a level his thesis certainly doesn't, and provides another prism to look both at his beloved space and at his life in a way that is not colored by the passing of his mom.
LePage has done an excellent job in opening his play into a film. In particular, the outer space imagery is spectacular, and as much as the world has come to accept space exploration, he mines the surrealism of the endeavor. As striking as these images are, it is that maddening creature, Philippe, who really holds the screen. He may be petty, maddening, and completely self-involved, but there is something magnificent in watching this resolutely earthbound creature open himself up to new possibilities�however faltering his steps�and step off finally into a weightless future, aware of the past but no longer shackled to it.
Far Side of the Moon was once a theatrical one-man show I would have bought tickets to see; now it's a movie I can't see myself recommending. "The best reflection of the contradictions of the human soul is poetry," says fortysomething doctoral student Philippe while recording a contest video about the cosmos. But rather than use the language of poetry to sort through Philippe and his meteorologist brother Andr�'s joint memory bank, writer-director Robert Lepage employs the stone-cold visual argot of a video installation, using match cuts, circular motifs, and superimpositions to connect the past and present and evoke the contradictions that estrange Philippe and Andr� (both played by Lepage) from each other and the world around them.
Philippe's dissertation on the cosmos argues that narcissism, not curiosity, propels us into outer space. Egotism may also explain Philippe's perpetual sour puss, not to mention the Kubrickian pretense of Lepage's aesthetic, which never succeeds at evoking the ostensibly profound rationale Philippe's fascination with space travel implies, or how this obsession may be part of a larger design. In essence, Lepage has remade 2001: A Space Odyssey without the Kubrick film's sense of spiritual wonder and elation.
There are no pretenses in why bespectacled, slump-shouldered, sad-eyed Phillippe (writer/director Robert Lepage) suddenly starts floating upward at the Russian airport before going back home to Canada. Robert Lepage---who also plays Phillippe�s homosexual, more carefree brother Andre---is like that. In his world, as it should be in many worlds, people can dream as they�ve always dreamed, but they can also fly. Fish can freeze solid in a fishbowl. Flashbacks are never typical. In one scene, some time after the brothers� mother dies, Phillippe takes out her pair of turquoise heels and drops them on the floor, filming them for a video he�s making to send to S.E.T.I (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) in Arizona, which is seeking ten videos to convert into binary code and shoot into space in the hopes that any aliens out there will watch. The black-and-white lens gradually turns color as a woman steps into those shoes and it�s their mother, in the �60s, hosting a pleasant gathering.
Lepage, who directed Cirque du Soleil�s �Ka� for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, has a stunning imagination, which makes up for a slow, staid story about Phillippe�s inner turmoil, which would have disappeared into itself completely without Lepage�s visual efforts, which find Phillippe desiring more in his life after facing disappointment after disappointment. It began with him as a young boy with a cancerous tumor on an optical nerve, which put him in the hospital for a time and it continues when his latest thesis, claiming that space exploration was spurred on by narcissism, is roundly rejected by the panel listening to him. Plus, he hawks newspaper subscriptions over the phone in a prison-like office where the desks are numbered and the supervisor chastises him for making personal phone calls, one of which turns into a personal call only after the woman he�s trying to sell a subscription to turns out to be an ex-girlfriend.
The other brother, Andre, is a weatherman, but moreso a weatherguy with his friendly demeanor toward whomever might be watching, and just living life as each hour comes, as each day turns into night. They�re so different that in certain scenes, it�s easy to forget that Lepage plays both roles and it�s a testament to Lepage�s talent for writing these men and knowing what makes each one who they are, especially Phillippe who still has a very long way to go in finding any happiness, trying to break away from his dispiriting life. In fact, most of the time, he�s not seen outside of any room; not the prison-like office, not his apartment, not even the gym, which he has a one-day coupon for and uses it.
In Phillippe�s childhood, first struck down by the tumor, and then his teenhood, where an acid trip finds him feeling 50 feet tall, there�s still nothing revealed toward why Phillippe hasn�t made any effort toward happiness in his life. Perhaps in some respect, his mother was the one who instilled him with any kind of spirit, any kind of feeling toward inspiration and exploration, but even while she loves him as any mother loves their kid, it�s what tied him down in life that keeps him down. Not anything from here. No easy answers are expected anyway, but some scenes feel the same, and not just by Phillippe making the video he hopes will be sent into space. It�s a gradual process, but it�s still nice to have something move occasionally, like an emotion or intense interest.
Lepage�s visual-effects-as-metaphors are effective, though, especially in a scene where a much younger Phillippe, knowing that an astronaut is attached to an air hose when he�s in space, figures that the bulge of his mom�s stomach contains an astronaut, since space is about the birth of discovery and new ideas, exploring new life and new experiences.
While the slow pace is a burden on some of what happens (witness Phillippe�s bitter rant to a bartender at a hotel bar after the noted Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov doesn�t show up to meet him), there is a beating pulse in �Far Side of the Moon.� It�s as wondrous as the imaginative tales we all read as kids. It�s an adult storybook tale for us, in reminding us that daily worries should be blended with imagination, always.
Lepage is a seriously inventive filmmaker, but he's far too cerebral for most filmgoers. This surreal examination of life is strikingly visual and thoughtfully moving, and also ponderous and pretentious.
Phillippe (Lepage) is a rootless middle-aged man who's still in school. The academic community is unwilling to accept PhD thesis, which claims that all space travel is narcissistic. Meanwhile, his vacuous younger brother Andre (Lepage again) seems far too happy with his job as a TV weatherman. Now their mother (Cadieux) has just died after a long illness, apparently severing the tenuous bond between them. As Phillippe tries to sort out the strands of his life, he struggles to make any meaningful sense of it.
Visually, this is clever and enticing work, as Lepage uses recurring imagery (the moon, a goldfish, television screens, washing machines) as Phillippe revisits his past and present. Special effects are both subtle and astonishing, and the camera gets up close to capture hidden recesses of emotion within the characters. But the film is badly lacking in energy, and all of the characters are grumpy, selfish, ignorant brats. This might be a realistic view of life, but it's also cruelly cynical.
As an actor, Lepage is at least intriguing to watch as both characters. With his more superficial charm and relaxed approach to life, Andre is much more likable than the sullen, wishy-washy Phillippe. And the strained relationship between them is honest and raw. The basic notion, obviously, is that these brothers are opposite sides of one man--like the moon has two sides, one we see and one we don't. But honestly, the concept is so obtuse and the film is so morose that it only makes us long for Charlie Kaufman's much more vivid and memorable approach to the same idea in Adaptation.
And it's a bit annoying that the film doesn't grab hold more effectively, because artistically it is a real achievement. Lepage constructs films fluidly, dissolving between scenes in almost imperceptible ways that are clever and extremely skilful while touching on deep themes. This is definitely art. But it's not terribly entertaining.
This film began as a one-man performance piece by Quebecois playwright and filmmaker Robert Lepage (Cal Performances presented it in Berkeley in 2001). It was highly acclaimed, and perhaps Lepage should have left it at that.
This screen version is well made, but it's a talkfest that wears its stage origins on its sleeve.
The story mingles the history of the space race with the efforts of two alienated brothers to come to terms with the death of their mother (Anne-Marie Cadieux). One is a drippy grad student whose thesis links narcissism to space travel, the other a slick TV weather announcer who is gay.
Lepage's talent is unquestionable. He not only directed and edited the film, he portrays both siblings, and manages to make them individuals. The film is visually impressive (it was shot in high-definition video) and it is intermittently funny.
However, Lepage indulges himself in metaphor mongering and throws in incidents that are individually absorbing but don't seem to go anywhere -- let alone to the far side of the moon.
The film may be best appreciated by those who've seen the stage version.
It takes about 28 days for the moon to orbit the earth and approximately 60 minutes for "Far Side of the Moon" to reveal its full splendor. Written and directed by Robert Lepage, the French-Canadian stage director, filmmaker and actor, this alternately rewarding and frustrating drama concerns two estranged brothers who, shortly after the death of their mother (Anne-Marie Cadieux), find themselves in each other's gravitational pull. For each brother, the other man represents the far or dark side of the moon, that mysterious and hidden realm so beloved by both progressive rock bands and the metaphorically minded.
With reckless disregard for the dangers of movie metaphor madness, Mr. Lepage himself plays both the glumly unhappy Philippe, a doctoral student who has yet to defend his dissertation or replace an old girlfriend, and his gay younger brother, a television meteorologist named Andr�. The director wears glasses and shoulder-sweeping hair for the retiring Philippe; a short cut and a chin spit of beard for the bolder Andr�. Through a series of rather leisurely scenes of the brothers at work and at play that are occasionally punctuated by flashbacks to childhood and Mom, Mr. Lepage creates a convincing dual portrait, reserving most of his attention for Philippe, the brother who, though well over 40, remains a serious work-in-progress.
Based on Mr. Lepage's play of the same title, "Far Side of the Moon" carries traces of the theater both in some of the dialogue and in its schematic construction. That said, it has been beautifully shot by the cinematographer Ronald Plante in the kind of high-definition digital video that makes the future of cinema look rather less grim than usual. It takes time, but Mr. Lepage does eventually shake off the theatrical trappings that drag down some early scenes to settle into a cinematic groove. In the film's most exuberant and visually enthralling scene, the teenage Philippe embarks on an acid trip during which he grows as big as the 50-foot woman and peers into apartment buildings as tiny as dollhouses. And then he takes his brother for a spin - in the family clothes dryer.
Mr. Lepage never really tells us what happened after that mind-altering trip to cause Philippe to narrow his sights so grievously, though from the bits and pieces (the ex-girlfriend included), it is easy to see how disappointment settled in. Stuck in a dead-end telemarketer's job and caught in graduate school limbo, with his droopy eyes and pliant chin, Philippe comes across as one of those adults who long ago put away childish things, trading imaginative flights of fancy for a life with two feet planted solidly on the ground. Yet by refusing to explain Philippe's malaise with psychological shorthand or swipes at poor dead Mom, Mr. Lepage cooks up a far more complex portrait of alienation in the modern world than might be expected from his first few scenes.
One of Mr. Lepage's most striking gambits in the film is his use of a rich blue similar to the one made famous by the artist Yves Klein called International Klein Blue. Klein used this blue in a mural that, he said, gave "rise to a sense of immersion in a space greater than infinity." In "Far Side of the Moon," a similar shade of blue pops up on an article of clothing, a swatch of sky and that marble-size view of the earth taken from outer space. As it happens, Philippe's dissertation hinges on his belief that the desire to explore space springs from narcissism. He thinks men want to embrace the infinite because they are interested only in themselves. For Philippe, traveling to the far side of the moon means discovering that all of us yearn to immerse ourselves in something more infinite than even space: love, other people, anything but ourselves.
An inventive adaptation of a one-man stage play into a lavish, hi-def, big-screen production, the fifth feature from actor-playwright-director Robert Lepage is easily his best since his masterful debut, Le Confessional. Far Side of the Moon is likewise set in his hometown of Quebec City, but rather than piling on the Hitchcock references, Lepage offers a sly, semi-autobiographical lesson in the motion of bodies, on and above the Earth. Employing plenty of the director's signature seamless pans across time and space, Lepage lyrically fuses childhood memories with present-day sibling rivalry, archival footage with crisp video.
Far Side of the Moon is also the first time filmmaker Lepage has directed the actor Lepage, and here he even stars as brothers. As lousy academic-slash-telemarketer Philippe, the portly director is a sad sack extraordinaire, barely coping with his beloved mother's recent death and the obliviousness of the scientific community to his Tsiolkovsky-influenced theories about the ego-driven nature of the space race. As well-to-do gay meteorologist brother Andr�, Lepage sports a pathetic goatee, appears slimmer (digital effect?), and seems to have inspired Philippe's harebrained hypotheses. But both brothers are obstinate in equal measure�Philippe, though, is a cancer survivor, and hence more bitter�and Lepage patiently brings the two mirror- image narcissists in line, like planets on parallel orbits. Reworking his own raw material, Lepage spins a rich, moving film that acknowledges humanity's power to break out of Earth's daily gravity; in the process, he leaves audiences floating.