Crew
Director/Screenplay – Francois Descraques, Producers – Robin Boespflug-Vonier & Stephanie Parthenay, Photography – Matthieu Misiraca, Music – Jimmy Tillier, Digital Effects – Fabulous (Supervisors – Albim Merle & Adrien Peze) & Mathematic, Makeup Effects Supervisor – Christophe Pizetta. Production Company – Pyramide Productions/France 2 Cinema/Alons Voir SPRL/Scope Pictures/OCS/Cine+/France Televisions.
Cast
Enya Baroux (Alice Alibert), Arnaud Ducret (Gilbert Alibert), Florent Dorian (The Visitor), Raphael Descraques (Raph), Audrey Pirault (Louise), Slimane-Baptiste Berhoun (Henry), Lenie Cherino (Constance), Mathieu Poggi (Matteo), Vincent Tirel (Victor), Assa Sylla (Belette), Alex Ramires (Fabio), Marc Riso (Francis), McFly (Galabroche), El Carlito (Defunax), Jenny Letellier (Charlie), Valentin Jean (Luxien), Ludovik (Richard), Julie Farenc (Cathy), Swann Daniel (Mulot)
Plot
There is an emergency at the Axomako nuclear power plant as two technicians struggle to decide which button to push to stop a meltdown. A visitor from the future appears and tries to convince them to push the right button, only for Time Patrol agents to appear urging the opposite choice whereupon the plant blows up. Some time earlier, local politician Gilbert Alibert announced plans to create the plant, but this was protested by his own daughter Alice who argued that the plant was being built by recycling by old materials. She broke into her father’s house attempting to get proof on his laptop. Just then the visitor appeared, followed by Time Patrol officers. In the shootout that ensued, the visitor transported Alice and Gilbert into the future. It was explained that they were in a future that had been devastated by a vast toxic cloud created by the explosion at the plant, which has killed millions around the world and turned others into zombies. Alice was confident that she could persuade her father to change his mind, while he was just waiting for the Time Patrol to find and free them.
The Visitor from the Future was a feature-length directorial debut for Francois Descraques. Desracques has made a bunch of French web series, including a number of genre works such as The Operators (2012), Rock Macabre (2015), Dead Floor (2016), Dead Lands (2016) and Dark Stories (2019). This is a film spinoff of his most popular web series Le Visiteur du Futur (The Visitor from the Future) (2009-14), which ran for 57 episodes ranging of between two and 28 minutes in length. The stories starred Florent Dorian as The Visitor who travels back in time to warn people of disasters about to occur, although he is often at cross-purposes with the Time Patrol.
I didn’t feel that enthused about The Visitor from the Future at the outset – the premise seemed a little too cutsie, a Time Travel plot jammed together with a global warming one maybe akin to something like Captain Nova (2021). However, the film won me over within the space of the first five minutes. These consist of an hilariously snappy series of scenes – the two technicians (McFly and El Carlito) debating over whether to hit the blue or the yellow button during the nuclear emergency; The Visitor (Florent Dorian) who appears in the midst with warnings not to do what they were planning; the appeal to the instruction book, only for The Visitor to vanish and reappear seconds later during which he has spent six months learning Mandarin – only to find the instructions are in Cantonese (something a Mandarin speaker shouldn’t have trouble deciphering – the differences between the two are the way the same text is pronounced) whereupon he returns with a Cantonese interpreter; and then the arrival of the Time Patrol who urge the pushing of the right button, which causes the plant to detonate in a purple toxic cloud.
The humour in these scenes is fast-paced and snappy. Francois Descraques succeeds in maintaining this almost the entire way through with only a few scenes that slow down in energy. The pacing and wordplay, much of which remarkably enough survives in subtitled translation, is bright and snappy. There are wonderful little jokes and asides – I loved the scene where Jenny Letellier is thrown into her seat by a security guard at the lecture and then insists on getting up again so that it can be filmed.
The Visitor from the Future also manages to be a wonderfully busy plot, winding in zombies, a community of cheerful post-apocalyptic urchins and visits to a wasteland bar. Some of the funniest scenes are those that involve the Time Patrol who start out as standard seeming visored stormtroopers before gradually being revealed to be comically inept in their dealings.
Trailer here