Dante01

Dante 01 (2008)

It’s the future, and everyone is bald.

Dante 01 is a French sci-fi written and directed by Marc Caro- the co-director of another French oddity, “The City of Lost Children.” The DVD comes in the original French with subtitles, or with an about-average English dub.

Caro’s solo effort here borrows much from the dark and fanciful style he and fellow director Jean-Pierre Jeunet developed for “… Children.” Everything has a dreary, worn-down look to it. Despite taking place on a space station, technology seems outdated and broken. Darkly lit, curious camera angles and blurring scenes that remind one a lot of a First-Person Shooter, and lots of scenes taking place through the eyes of security cameras mounted throughout the ship give the film a interesting visual feel.

Unfortunately, that is about all the film has going for it. (Well, that and a shower scene, but that’s in the first new minutes of the film. It goes downhill from there.)

The “Psychiatric Detention Center” Dante 01 is named after the hellish molten planet, Dante, which it orbits. The film begins with a man named Hannibal, the lone survivor of some never-explained disaster where a starship’s entire crew was killed. He walks around in a daze and doesn’t talk much, so he’s accused of murdering everyone. They erase his name from his file, leaving him as simply “Unknown,” freeze him, wrap him up in Saran Wrap for freshness, and have him delivered to space-jail with the rest of the crazies.

So they talk a bit, introduce some doctors, introduce some other criminals, then brood over how they’re orbiting Hell, and how life sucks. One of the inmates declares the new guy a messiah nicknames him “Saint George” and says he’s going to save everyone. Oh and some Asian doctor shows up with orders to use some new nanotech cure for the inmates that fixes crazy on the genetic level.

Right about here things stop making sense. There are a few minor conflicts, everyone gets gassed, and they sneak in and inject one of the inmates with the new drug…, which just happens to lead to a tortured, agonizing death. But, a-hah… Saint George also sees things! Death, apparently, is symbolized by glowing space starfish. When the all the glowing space starfish get to your heart, you die. But George can see the starfish, and can reach into you and pull it out. And eat it, bloody flailing arms and all. Nom nom nom.

With the starfish gone you’re healed. Everything. Your body, your mind, all clean. The inmates fight, a throat gets slit, and George eats his starfish too. He’s all better! A few of the other inmates are scared of this, so they stab him twelve or thirteen times in the chest! George dies… but only for a little bit. He’s alive again by the time they drag his corpse to the medical bay! It’s a resurrection!

Yeah, in case you didn’t notice the religious allegory is thick. Especially with character names like Charon, Lazarus, Buddha, Caesar, Perséphone, and of course the Saint himself. Jesus…

So he eats some more starfish. Oh, and the space station is now going to crash into the planet. The only way to stop it is to get to the manual controls. In the future, the steering wheel is located in a room separated from the rest of the ship by a water-filled cooling vent. This makes no sense, but it is a good excuse to boil someone to death in an effort to swim through the tunnel, pop out on the other side screaming... and does absolutely nothing. Zip. I had to rewind and watch this scene a half-dozen times. He doesn’t even flip a single switch on the control panel before slumping to the ground like an overcooked lobster. … but the ship is saved!

How do we celebrate? Let’s chuck George out an airlock! Now he’s floating around in space staring at Dante, arms outstretched, with the space station appearing as a big cross behind him. In one horrible (and repetitive) scene he summons the power of his own glowing space starfishes! Pew pew! He shoots the planet, which turns from lava into a blue-green Earth! Oh, The End.

What… the… fuck…? Goddamn French films…

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reviewed by Jeremy Gaggins