Guy-Roger Duvert
Virtual Revolution

This film is practically all about aesthetics. I mean that in a perfectly aware and perhaps even clever way, it sets up a hackneyed cyberpunk story, enriches it with some gothic elements here and there, lays a tale of a failed romance at its base, and then, voilà, fantasy suggestions evoked within a virtual dimension where all of humanity seems to have retreated to escape the surrounding ugliness, and at the center of it all, there's the usual figure of the brooding anti-hero like Rick Deckard who, however, is certainly less savvy and instead of questioning the nature of human versus replicant, wonders who he truly is, lost between searching for the real reason behind his girlfriend's death and the search for the real culprits and a safe escape into virtual reality.

Nash (Mike Dopud) is practically a sort of agent on behalf of a company that manages the networks holding up this massive virtual reality, the Synternis Corporation, which in 2047 is virtually the answer to the great economic and social crisis that has hit France like the rest of the Western world. Tasked by the company to root out a group of opponents or let's call them "restorers," who call themselves "necromancers," acting also through virtual terrorism and responsible for the death of 148 "connected" individuals through the dissemination of a virus. Nash agrees to handle the matter also because that's how his girlfriend was killed and for this reason, he is willing to go all the way at any cost, also considering the fact that after the event, he too took refuge in the virtual world.

In an alternation between the virtual dimension, mostly attributable to fantasy settings and those "real," borrowed from genre cinema experiences from "Blade Runner" onwards, Nash finds himself caught in the grip of the company that hired him, Interpol, which is investigating Synternis, and the necromancers themselves. When faced with choosing which side to stand on, he will ultimately understand that the choice is not so much about the past and revenge but about his present and future life. This revives the eternal theme regarding virtual "life" and how this should be considered within the complex of our existences: is this a dimension utterly separate from it? Is it an offshoot? Are there radical differences? Are there differences between real life and virtual life, or can these both be considered in the same way and with equal "dignity" on the experiential level? This last one in particular seems to be the question and final consideration of this surely mediocre film, but one that could still appeal and make an impression due to certain well-characterized scenes if you like those types of settings referenced and which are well-rendered despite the independent production.