UPSIDE DOWN (Juan Solanas). 110 minutes. Opens Friday (April 26). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: N
Upside Down is what happens when a director with a profoundly stupid idea isn’t talked down, but rather enabled at every turn.
Writer/director Juan Solanas’s fantasy romance is set in a place where two worlds are forever staring at one another, their opposite gravities keeping people where they’re supposed to be and a mega-corporation using the resources of “down below” to fuel the upscale lives of those “up top.” It’s a simple visual image that makes no logical sense, but that’s what drives the movie.
When idealistic downstairs resident Adam (Jim Sturgess) falls for dreamy Up Top fashion plate Eden (Kirsten Dunst), he’ll move heaven and earth(s) to woo her. This would be fine as a metaphor for love reaching across class boundaries, but Solanas can’t leave it there he has to add layers and layers of unnecessary intrigue to sustain a concept that even Cirque du Soleil might have thought twice about mounting.
