Vesper: An Unpretentious Creative Feast For the Senses

Vesper, directed by Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper, is the mesmerizing story of an unexpected she-ro. Rife with beautiful visuals and timely metaphor, it is an apocalyptic warning to humanity with an underlying but palpable sense of hope.

A Child Ahead of Her Time

Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) is a precocious 13 year old living in a post-apocalyptic era where humans have decimated most of the natural world. Genetically engineered plants abound as people scramble to use what is left of the natural world for survival.

The oligarchs have built “citadels”, where technological advances boom while the rest of the world is cut off and forced to scrape by. Vesper lives in a shack with her father Darius (Richard Brake), who is ill and relies on a ventilator to survive. He is a constant source of companionship to Vesper though, through a drone he uses to talk and accompany Vesper around.

Vesper spends her time creating beautiful, healing plants out of the wreckage that the Earth has become and the world at large relies upon bacteria for electricity.

The only one who has a communication device near her is her cruel, self involved uncle, Jonas (Eddie Marsan). Jonas acts as the territory’s leader and also holds a vast amount of seeds and saplings. Some of these seeds are specially made in the Citadel and could potentially feed a vast amount of people, if they could crack the DNA code to make these seeds fertile. He takes the blood of young children as payment for said seeds and bacteria.

The Citadel does its own human genetic engineering, creating human like servants called “Jugs”. The Jugs are created to be loyal to the oligarchs so they don’t have to trouble with real humans, who have minds of their own.

Source: IFC Films

The Crash

Vesper goes out foraging in the forest and finds a Citadel woman, Camellia (Rosy McEwan) passed out against a tree. She is wounded and many of the genetically engineered plants look to be “feeding” on her. Vesper takes her in, against her father’s wishes, to nurse her back to health.

When Camellia rouses, she states she is the daughter of a powerful leader in the Citadel and that she is looking for her father Elias (Edmund Dehn), who was separated from her in an aircraft crash. In exchange for Vesper’s help finding him, she offers Vesper and Darius aid from the Citadel to enhance their living situation.

Unbeknownst to Vesper, others from the Citadel are looking for Camellia and her father, as Camellia secretly holds something extremely valuable.

Source: IFC Films

In All Honesty…

I absolutely loved this film.

Aside from Chapman’s brilliant portrayal of the fiercely independent, highly intelligent and hopeful Vesper, who is years ahead of her time, the use of practical and digital effects were spectacular. They reminded me of the fantasy/sci-fi films of the 80’s, when digital effects were not as developed and overused as they are now.

Buozyte and Samper, along with their visual and special effects crew, create a rich and dazzling world not yet seen before. Plastered against a bleak, muddy terrain is a vast collection of extremely colorful, life-filled plants that move, breathe, defend themselves and react to stimuli. Their presence in the film is crucial for both beauty, support and “creatures” that add the only other sense of life and promise to the putrefied Earth.

The fantasy part isn’t fully detached from reality. They use what we already know of plants to create species that aren’t currently known, but definitely not out of the realm of possibility. The plants mimic the cooperation and mechanisms seen here, with vibrant bursts of delightful imagination. Like on our Earth, they are characters of their own right and they have the ability to heal and flourish but also to poison and harm. The film doesn’t need a lot of flashy lasers, extravagant, costly, fantastical creatures and unattainable technology to woo the audience into its world.

Source: IFC Films

The filmmakers use the people and the plants to bring together living metaphors for what we see happening in our world today, mixed with a larger sense of hopeful optimism. It shows us that when fear, selfishness and darkness runs rampant in most of the human world, we can still depend on those whose unsung mission is to nourish, heal, innovate and rejuvenate.

Humans still have so much to learn from nature. In our society of “more, more, more”, we definitely need to learn to take only what we need. In a world of wars we need to learn more about peaceful cooperation to benefit our existence with Earth’s creatures, together. In a world of greed, we need to learn to replenish. reuse and replant, instead of decimate.

Most of all, we need to learn to love; ourselves first, then let that love expand into the outer world, blossoming and enlightening others to overcome the wanton destruction of fear.

Vesper leads this mission in its exceptionally inspirational way, showing us that even in the darkest of night, the light is only a few breaths away.