Film review: Another Earth (three out of five stars)

Director: Mike Cahill

Starring: Brit Marling, William Mapother

IT MAKES a pleasant change to watch a sci-fi movie that doesn’t involve ugly aliens blasting human beings to pieces.

Instead, we have a thoughtful film that explores relationships in extreme circumstances.

Brit Marling is an impressive young actress who also co-wrote the screenplay with the director.

She stars as Rhoda Williams, who we first see as a student with a promising future in astrophysics.

After celebrating a bit too much she has a terrible car accident.

In the other vehicle is a successful composer (John Burroughs played by William Mapother) and his family.

It’s a life-changing moment for both.

The same night of the crash a duplicate earth is discovered in the solar system.

A space mission is financed to visit Earth 2 with places up for grabs in a competition.

Rhoda sees it as a chance to start again, but complicates everything by visiting Burroughs in order to apologise, only to bottle it and end up as his cleaner.

The two become close and there are all manner of emotional complexities.

Thankfully, there are no easy options taken by the writers, though the final scenes do wrap things up rather nicely.

If you’re a major sci-fi fan then you might well be disappointed.

It has a lot going for it, though, with Marling and Mapother (a cousin of Tom Cruise) excellent and some tight direction that prevents the pace flagging.

However, what jarred with me were some leaps of faith we had to take with the plot - unexplained situations and events that didn’t seem logical.

But that might just be me being picky.

Steve Payne

Screening courtesy of Cineworld Crawley