If Wes Anderson and Nancy Meyers joined forces to remake the 2016 sci-fi drama Passengers, the result would be something like If You Were the Last, a vivid but overly cute feature debut from director Kristian Mercado that premiered at SXSW.
Anthony Mackie and Zoë Chao star as a pair of astronauts stranded aboard a NASA shuttle that gets lost in space, and their decent onscreen chemistry helps fuel a rom-com tackling questions of fidelity, friendship and, well, fornication, as the would-be couple endlessly drifts through the cosmos. Backed by a colorful DIY aesthetic that makes the most of its budget, the film is nonetheless sappy and, in terms of its comedy, rather cringe-worthy, never quite finding the sweet spot between romance and laughs.
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If You Were the Last
The Bottom Line Could use more gravity.
Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Narrative Spotlight)
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Zoë Chao, Natalie Morales, Geoff Stults
Director: Kristian Mercado
Screenwriter: Angela Bourassa
1 hour 29 minutes
Written by Angela Bourassa, the high-concept story is purposely low-fi from the start, revealing how Adam (Mackie) and Jane (Chao), two highly trained space explorers, are stuck aboard a floating ship whose interior resembles an oversized college dorm suite. With nothing much to do but watch old 80s movies, exercise, water the oxygen-providing plants and eat a dwindling supply of Pop Tarts, the two grow inevitably closer as they realize there’s little hope of them ever making it back to Earth.
Both Adam and Jane are also happily married, but they’ve been adrift for three years and it may finally be time to move on. The tension between them is initially at a low simmer, until Adam proposes they have sex for health purposes — an idea Jane rejects at first, until she realizes he may be onto something. They talk a lot about masturbation, including references to Jane’s sizeable vibrator collection — consisting of electric NASA screwdrivers outfitted with rubber tips — and there’s something so clinical in their approach to carnal desire that the whole thing feels unsexy.
When the astronauts finally do it, the filmmakers toss in a predictable but welcome twist that will bring them back home to face the lives they thought to be leaving behind. It’s at that point that If You Were the Last gets a little serious, which is better than when it was trying to be funny, questioning how you deal with your loved ones when you’re not in love anymore, even as the entire world is expecting you to be happily reunited.
Mackie and Chao are good in those late scenes, which are at least about something. All the shuttle-set stuff is, on the other hand, a little silly and childish, with the two actors seemingly having lots of fun as their characters dance the tango, get down to Lionel Richie and, eventually, get down and dirty. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s fun to watch them doing these things, and many of the jokes float off into space without ever landing anywhere.
Aesthetically, If You Were the Last is an acquired taste, but it’s also where Mercado’s talents as a director are most evident. Eschewing any sort of sci-fi realism, he and production designer Chris Stull concoct a cartoonish papier mâché universe where nothing is meant to be believable, keeping the tone whimsical in a very Wes Anderson-y kind of way.
Indeed, the film’s highlight is probably the set itself, which is about as far from a real spaceship, and as close to an Ikea store, as you can get. In that sense Last recalls another recent off-the wall entry to the genre: Claire Denis’ High Life, a vastly darker take with a similar storyline about humans and their sexual needs drifting through the universe. (Instead of space vibrators, Denis’ film memorably included a device called “the fuckbox.”) Mercado’s movie is infinitely lighter to a fault, but treads in the same waters, using sci-fi to ask questions about desire and relationships that it then answers all too easily.
Full credits
Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Narrative Spotlight)
Production companies: Pinky Promise, Storm City Films, Depth of Field
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Zoë Chao, Natalie Morales, Geoff Stults
Director: Kristian Mercado
Screenwriter: Angela Bourassa
Producers: Andrew Miano, Dan Balgoyen, Britta Rowings, Dennis Masel, Gabrielle Nadig, Jessamine Burgum, Kara Durrett, Jon Levin, Sean Woods, Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz
Executive producers: Harrison Huffman, Will Greenfield, Angela Bourassa
Director of photography: Alex Disenhof
Production designer: Chris Stull
Costume designer: Eulyn C. Hufkie
Editor: Henry Hayes
Composer: Christopher Bear
Casting director: Meagan Lewis
Sales: UTA
1 hour 29 minutes
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