Director: Darren Paul Fisher
Starring: Daniel Fraser, Eleanor Wyld, Dylan Llewellyn, Georgina Minter-Brown, Owen Pugh
Cert: 15
Running Time: 105 mins
If Christopher Nolan decided to make an X-MEN movie, this is pretty much how it would end up. Darren Paul Fisher’s FREQUENCIES is a defiantly high-minded science-fiction romance set in a society not unlike our own, but steered by chilly scientific principles. Factors such as luck and destiny are quantified and the progress of children strictly monitored.
Opening in a school for gifted youngsters, we learn their lives will be determined by their “frequencies” – powerful internal forces that can disrupt the environment around them. Marie and Zak enter into a series of experiments designed to test a dangerous idea. She is high frequency, he is low. If they spend more than a minute together calamitous things happen, such as freak weather conditions or things falling from planes. As a prodigy her interest is purely scientific, her frequency leaving her detached and emotionless. But he wants a relationship, and in exploring this concept the pair veer into unexplored territory, after which the world will never be the same again.
Though this isn’t Fisher’s first film it has the distinct feel of a debut – there’s an earnest quality to the script, which echoes old school sci-fi. You don’t so much have characters as mouthpieces for Fisher’s vision. Peculiar for a love story of course, but well-suited to the cerebral nature of the production. It’s elegant but sterile. Yet despite this the ideas contained within are very intriguing, and this puts Fisher on a footing with Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, directors whose works you forgive for the strange acting and occasional hamfisted moment. There aren’t any stellar performances, but this appears to be as much to do with the helmer as with the unknown cast. Blair Mowat’s largely ambient score helps you along the way, appropriately enough as music becomes a major part of the narrative.
It’s by no means brilliant. The plot lurches into conspiracy mode for the last third, seemingly to keep the story going to feature length. Crucially the chaos caused when the lovers are in proximity is never explained, at least it wasn’t clear to this reviewer. While it overreaches itself toward the end, the important thing is whether the casual watcher can keep up with it, something Fisher just about succeeds at. The final scenes are weighed down with an epic amount of exposition, but you could argue the same basic point about Nolan’s INCEPTION. Fisher also accentuates old technology, focusing on objects like clockwork mechanisms and train sets, that I thought made a decent visual counterpoint.
What you come away with most of all is a sense of the writer/producer/director’s potential for future films. If this is what he can achieve with a low budget, how will he fare with the big bucks and a bigger name cast? Time will tell. In the meantime, we are left to scratch our heads at a British movie that stands out from the crowd due to its determination that an audience pay attention, a rare dimension in today’s cinema. I definitely picked up some interesting signals here.
[usr=3] FREQUENCIES is out now to buy on DVD and Blu-ray. Pick up your copy by clicking here.
