At some point, we have all looked into the night sky and been awestruck by the realization that we are only one small part of a much bigger, impossibly infinite universe – and while we carry ourselves with a sense of importance, there is so much we simply cannot understand, existing as small and inconsequential beings that ultimately do not matter as much as we would think. For some, this is a depressing thought, whereas for others it is the very definition of an epiphany, the precise realization that helps us move towards a more self-aware, complex understanding our the universe and our place within it, a daunting but liberating process that not many of us can comprehend in its entirety. Someone who does prove to have an unexpectedly strong handle on this premise is Jérémy Clapin, who previously made the incredible I Lost My Body and follows that masterful examination of the human condition with Meanwhile on Earth (French: Pendant ce temps sur terre), his first foray out of animation and a film that features many of the skills he mastered previously, asserted onto an entirely different narrative form. The film follows a young woman navigating many different challenges – she’s in the awkward space between adolescence and adulthood, trying to make a living for herself as a nurse in an old age home, while also doing what she can to hold onto the final vestiges of her youth. She balances this with her internal existential quandaries, which are only made more difficult through the loss of her brother, an astronaut who was sent into space years before and has seemingly disappeared while taking part in a research mission, and while no official confirmation of his whereabouts has been made, it is generally believed that he met a tragic fate, something that the protagonist is struggling to comprehend. A difficult premise persists throughout what is essentially beautifully moving but sometimes quite callous drama that finds Clapin setting out to capture a very different set of existential themes than the ones we encountered with his previous endeavours.

There is value in postponing judgement on a work of art until we’ve allowed ourselves to sit with it for a while since there are often hidden meanings and themes that prove to be exceptionally important, but only reveal themselves gradually after steadily meandering through a different set of ideas. It is easy to view Meanwhile on Earth as yet another addition to the growing body of cerebral science fiction films that explore the relationship between humans and our surroundings, particularly what occurs when we are plucked out of our environment and placed elsewhere. However, there isn’t much speculative commentary in this film – it is certainly more aligned with science than it is with the fiction side of the subject, except in the opening scene and the sporadic animated sequences that we can assume take place in the mind of the protagonist, everything in this film is restricted to Earth, using the concept of space travel as a framing device more than a propellant for the plot. There have been a few attempts to look at the other side of space travel, focusing on the lives of the people who are left behind and forced to wonder whether they will see their loved ones again, but Meanwhile on Earth is one that finds meaning in the more melancholy side of these conversations, exploring the experiences of someone after being told that someone they love has disappeared and has likely perished, the unsettling reality is that they don’t even have the comfort or closure that many of us take for granted when we lose a family member, with his body very likely disintegrating into the vast unknown of space. Ultimately, Clapin set out to make a film about grief – that is essentially the foundation of Meanwhile on Earth, a film that is driven by its perpetual desire to examine the world from a distinctly different perspective, following the experiences of someone forced to reckon with her mortality while grieving the loss of her brother, falling into a state of delusion where she forms a difficult but comforting relationship with the universe that has consumed him, coming to terms with her loss through asking question that she knows do not have any clear answers.

Much of the impact of Meanwhile on Earth comes in how the film characterizes the protagonist, who is constructed as a deeply complex, unorthodox figure who is difficult to entirely comprehend start based on her extraordinary ambiguities, but who gradually becomes more clear as the film progresses and we learn more about her life and what brought her to this particular point. Megan Megan Northam is a formidable lead – she does not have much experience as an actor, but the director uses her lack of prior work as an asset, crafting a film in which she can deliver a raw, powerful performance as a young woman trying desperately to make her way through a world she simply cannot understand, and who is consistently searching for meaning, despite knowing that it likely cannot be found. There’s something so captivating about the grit she brings to this film – it’s a very internal, subtle performance, but one that is not lacking in nuance by any means, having a complexity that ties the entire film together. We never can fully penetrate the layers of this character, whose intentionally vague exterior conceals a sense of aloofness that plays into the film’s bizarre understanding of its existential themes, our relationship with the protagonist being essentially observing her in her day-to-day life, quietly unravelling the layers that make up this character. Meanwhile on Earth does mostly function as quite an unorthodox coming-of-age story, with Elsa’s journey being one that is filled with the recognizable challenges of venturing into adulthood – changing relationships with your family, holding down a steady job, bracing for the unknown future that lays ahead – all the while she is trying to work through grief that she has no ideas how to navigate, leading to her descent into a stage of deep melancholia and confusion, from which Clapin can derive a truly extraordinary, compelling performance from the young but extremely promising actor who makes a tremendous case for herself as a performer with a bright future ahead.

Meanwhile on Earth is not going to be to the taste of every viewer, which is par for the course for Clapin, who constructs films that are designed to provoke thought and stir a reaction, which is not always welcome when dealing with such daunting, harrowing ideas. The film is far from a traditional science fiction work – if anything, it plays as a haunting psychological thriller that uses a range of techniques to evoke a particular reaction, with science fiction being merely a framing device that serves as our entry point into the lives of these characters. The film requires the viewer to be willing to seek out the very specific wavelength on which the story is built, and gradually surrender to its peculiarities as we navigate some of the challenging themes explored throughout. This is not a conventional film by any means, and we are keenly aware of how deep and complex the themes that drive the story go, becoming more aware of its unusual structure the further we allow ourselves to peer into its depths, which are seemingly endless and truly hypnotic. Clapin may have worked primarily in animation before making this film, but he proves to have the same set of skills in how he constructs this story, which is a quietly devastating character study in which we are given brief but meaningful insights into the mind of this character, but still kept at a distance as we follow her existential voyage. It is primarily an atmospheric drama in which we have to grow acclimated to the mood, which is dense and challenging, but possesses a magnificent beauty in terms of its emotional content and how it reconciles some harrowing ideas with a vaguely ethereal story about embracing the expansive and unknown depths of our minds, which proves to be extremely challenging but also extremely insightful once we get past the initial obstacles that stand between us and our understanding of these many sprawling concepts that constitute this film.

While it does move at a stately pace and can be considered somewhat measured in terms of how it allows the plot to unfurl, Meanwhile on Earth is still a wonderfully engaging, compelling film that earns our reverence by challenging the viewer to look beneath the surface of their comfortable surroundings, questioning the nature of our realities and understanding how we are simply one minuscule speck in an endless, expansive universe that possesses secrets that we know we will never truly be able to understand or find the neat resolution that we are vain enough to imagine we deserve. There is something profoundly moving about this film, despite it refusing to pander to the most obvious and surface-level themes, avoiding obvious over-sentimentality and being mainly straightforward, resisting the heavy-handed emotions that we would expect from a film based around themes of grief and trauma. It’s a quietly devastating piece of genre filmmaking, where science fiction is viewed as something unsettling, rather than being driven by that sense of awe-inspiring wonder that we usually find populating such films. Its frankness in some areas and enigmatic complexity in others give it a more varied mood and allow us to undergo quite a daunting voyage with the protagonist as she processes her grief, seeking out the closure she realizes is not always possible for people in her position. Beautifully-made and incredibly poetic, Meanwhile on Earth is a remarkable effort from a director who is steadily developing into an essential cinematic voice, and whose profound talents prove to be nothing but a wholehearted merit for this incredibly daring and provocative piece of cinema.