FRANCE 5 – FRIDAY OCTOBER 7 AT 8:50 P.M. – FILM
A quarter of a century has passed since the American release of Welcome to Gattaca. The first feature film by a director of New Zealand origin, Andrew Niccol, carried by a trio of barely known young actors (Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law), the film thrilled (he is intelligent), amazed (he refuses the big show) or bored the critics of the time. Over the years, Welcome to Gattaca has become a milestone in anticipation cinema and one of the reference points in the debate on transhumanism.
The world described by Andrew Niccol, also a screenwriter, was futuristic – for the time – only by the nervous purring of electric cars. The characters move in a refined architecture (the Marin County Civic Center, by Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the sets), dressed in costumes and dresses that make them a stylized version of film noir protagonists.
What has really changed in this universe remains invisible: it is the genes of humans. Old-fashioned reproduction is now only a marginal practice and couples procreate in vitro after having eliminated from their respective contributions everything that could hinder the existence – and especially the career – of their offspring, from asthma to myopia.
Alas for him, Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) was designed the old-fashioned way, in the back of a car. His heart tends to race, he doesn’t see much better than a mole. However, he dreams of going to the stars. But when he is hired by the firm Gattaca, dedicated to space transport, he can not claim better than the post of maintenance agent, failing to pass the genetic tests.
icy rhythm
A petty criminal (Tony Shalhoub) puts him in contact with Jérôme (Jude Law), a young man with an impeccable heritage, hemiplegic following an accident, who provides Vincent with the hair he needs. , epithelium, urine and blood to pass the turnstiles that control access to the upper floors of Gattaca.
On arriving there, the young man meets Irene (Uma Thurman), a young company executive afflicted with heart failure despite genetic selection. The murder of a senior executive, on the eve of the launch of a rocket which is to take Vincent away, attracts the police (led by Alan Arkin) and makes the Vincent-Jérôme-Irene trio the target of threatening curiosities.
Andrew Niccol nevertheless refuses to accelerate the icy pace of his story. We will never forget the straitjacket that weighs on all relationships – professional, romantic, family – in the society described by Welcome to Gattaca. The actors stay under-rev (which suits Uma Thurman and Jude Law better than Ethan Hawke) so that the eye continues to embrace the overall image: it is terrifyingly beautiful.
Welcome to Gattaca, by Andrew Niccol (1997), with Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Ernest Borgnine, Alan Arkin, Gore Vidal (1 h 43). France 5 and on france.tv