Written and directed by someone who goes by the name of Quarxx, someone I can only assume has enjoyed a full and fruitful life after escaping the confines of the ZX Spectrum text-based sci-fi adventure game he used to be trapped in, All The Gods In The Sky is a dark and brooding drama that has great potential, but ultimately feels like a film with a much better film hidden away inside it.
Jean-Luc Couchard is Simon, a man who spends his life looking after his sister, Estelle (Melanie Gaydos). Estelle was very badly injured and disfigured in a childhood accident that involved a gun, and it's now up to Simon to ensure that she gets fed, medicated, and cleaned while staying in her bed. Other people come and go, including a young girl named Zoé (Zelie Rixhon), but Simon's world is essentially Estelle, and vice versa.
Dark and dour, All The Gods In The Sky is also unable to fully commit to how far into the abyss it wants to drag viewers. Quarxx has a good starting point, the main opening sequence is a hell of a way to grab your attention, but then almost meanders from one scene to the next, all the way to an ending that could only be more disappointing if it had been the rug-pull of everything turning out to be one big dream.
Couchard does very well in his role, being believably tortured and mentally strained in a way that has him reaching for even the weakest and thinnest of lifelines. Gaydos is stuck under a lot of make up, and the stillness of her character, but also does a great job. Rixhon brings some youthful energy to her scenes, but isn't used often enough.
I can envision multiple different ways to handle this material, from the unrelenting and brutal approach that Gaspar Noé might have brought to things to the more fantastical and stylised movie we could have got from someone like Panos Cosmatos. Quarxx positions himself somewhere between the two, and that doesn't allow the film to make any clear statement. There are times when this is an exploration of guilt and consequences, perhaps questioning the price to be paid for something that happened in childhood, but adding one block atop another throughout turns the whole thing into a confused and unbalanced movie equivalent of a Jenga tower about to topple over.
Disappointing, but not without one or two scenes that may well end up seared on to your memory, All The Gods In The Sky indicates that Quarxx may be someone who could yet serve up something truly astonishing. This just isn't it, but it should have been.
4/10
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