Far Side of the Moon (La Face cacheé de la lune) Movie Review:


Main Cast: Robert Lepege, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Marco Poulin, Celine Bonnier,Gregory Hlady

Originally a highly- acclaimed theatre show adapted, written by, directed and starring Robert Lepage.
He plays two brothers, Phillippe and Andre. Andre is a superficial weatherman, and Andre an intelligent but calamitous telesales worker.
Due to their differences the brothers have a testy relationship, and because one looks inwards and one outwards, they have never really seen eye to eye. This remains the case, even when they are forced together by the tragic death of their beloved mother.

Phillippe is an academic dreamer who is always searching for something out-with normal life. With an obsessive interest in science and cosmology, he exists on a plane where he believes the human race spend too much time focusing on the wrong things.

Because his main topic of conversation is so specialist (example from his thesis “It is narcissistic of man to depict god in his own image”), he struggles to get people to listen to his thoughts and can’t believe so few people are interested in how we were created and what else might be out there in the universe. Bizarrely, the backdrop of the ‘Space Race’ between Russia and the US in the sixties is used to convey his sense of frustration that no-one listens to what he has to say. Even more bizarrely, this aspect works pretty well.

You can see why “Far Side…” has been adapted. It provides the opportunity to colour in all of the rich imagery that can’t be created in a stage show.
It has a lovely floaty feel and clever set pieces that hark back to the sixties era, (when his fascination with space begun), such as the porthole windows that both appear in rocket ships and coincidentally, are also the shape of planets. His mother even looked just like Jackie O.

Lepage is undoubtedly a very talented man to have written, directed and starred - and his narrative about why we are here is really thought provoking and bound to prompt plenty of debate.

There are some well rendered scenarios which raise a wry smile, but it’s not really designed to be a laugh out loud feature.
Funniest of all is Phillippe’s entry to a competition run by people who ‘believe we are not alone in the universe’; the way it ties in neatly with everything else is really clever. Andre is also a great character - very ‘affected’, but it might have been nicer to see a bit more of him.

There are a lot of things to like about this feature. But equally, it’s also slowly paced, meandering and not terribly eventful.

You have to be in a certain frame of mind to get the best out of this gentle comedy. If watched at the wrong time, it could send you into a ponderous spiral, just like Phillippe.

Terresa Gaffney

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