Science fiction is in a strange spot. We live in a time where the woes of the future are more pressing than ever. Be it the rise of artificial intelligence or the imminent takeover by the tech oligarchs, the dystopian future is now, and reality seems much stranger than fiction. Sci-fi tropes and reality are overlapping, and this occurrence alone begs the question: How will filmmakers portray the future and technology in a substantial way? Flora Lau’s debut feature “Luz,” which she wrote and directed, stresses this question as sci-fi’s awkward modern positioning seems nearly inescapable in the film.
With a bifurcated structure, “Luz” follows two characters: Ren (Sandrine Pinna, “Dead Talents Society”) and Wei (Xiaodong Guo, “Blind Massage”). Ren is the distant step-daughter of Sabine (Isabelle Huppert, “Elle”) who has been having fainting spells, prompting Ren to visit her and mend their frayed relationship. Simultaneously, Wei, a hired contractor, tries to reconnect with his estranged webcam model daughter Fa (Deng Enxi, “Melody of Golden Age”). Lau weaves these two tales of familial disconnection together with the Luz, a virtual reality device allowing players to interact with each other via a virtual reality space. With the Luz, you can play shooting games, pretend to have a drink and talk to fellow players. “It’s not just a game,” Ren says about the Luz. Indeed, for this cast of uncommunicative loners, the Luz is better than reality, providing an instant and gratifying escape from a mundane world of consequence. It is also with the Luz that Ren and Wei’s paths cross and their problems mirror each other. [cc: ‘their problems mirror each other’ sounds clunky to me]
If the description of “Luz” (both the device and the film) sounds exactly like the contemporary world — with our use of smartphones, social media and video games — then that’s because it is. The divide between our digital and physical world seems to be of great interest to Lau, who created the Luz to neatly represent all the joys and dangers of technological progress. With this VR alternative world concept, Lau forces these characters to confront each other and themselves in roundabout ways. For Wei and Sabine — the film’s parental characters — the Luz’s therapeutic capabilities also serve as a warning against internet addiction. Through Ren and Fa — the film’s younger characters — we understand the device’s presence to be dissociative. Lau’s great exploration in the film is the question of how technology can bridge the gap between generations while simultaneously acknowledging its pitfalls.
The Luz is a clear, straightforward metaphor, but it is also one that Lau only ever draws from without extending to its logical conclusion. As such, the message and themes of “Luz” are obvious and shallow. At times, the film dwells on aspects of this digital VR world as though it is still a novel concept to us today. Parasocial relationships are one of the film’s fascinations, despite how worn down the topic is — at least among younger generations (the same goes for the portrayal of video games and streaming culture). It’s possible that, using the concept of the Luz, Lau hopes to distance it from our familiar surroundings, seeking to emphasize peculiar behaviors that should not be normalized — like internet stalking and online relationships. Yet, the mere existence of the Luz begs more nuanced questions, such as whether virtual reality — a certain fixture in our lives — should even be considered a different reality at all.
Worse, the film’s dual narrative doesn’t grant Lau enough time to develop either of its core relationships. Wei’s arc from concerned parent to weird internet stalker to Luz stalker comes out of nowhere and is set in a maddeningly different emotional register from the rest of the film. Paired with clumsy dialogue — “It’s even better than reality!” — emotional scenes lack the foundational character building to hit the mark. It doesn’t help then that the two storylines don’t substantially inform each other, making Lau’s exploration of reconnection and the impact of technology fall short.
That isn’t to say “Luz” lacks other interesting qualities. On a technical level, the VR sequences are transportive, and cinematographer Benjamín Echazarreta (“Blanquita”) manages to make the film look both cinematic and video game-like through the use of steady hand-held shots and an almost hazy, hallucinogenic video effect. Echazarreta’s retro-neon aesthetic helps punctuate Mimi Xu’s (debut) psychedelic and synth-heavy score, immersing us further into a compulsive digital world. Unfortunately, this digital world is no stranger than ours. In fact, the film may just as well be set today, only with all of our world’s particularities simplified into a singular digital device. As fantastical as some of the VR scenes are, they only feel slightly more than mundane.
It all comes back to modern sci-fi’s quandary. When the fictional digital world of “Luz” simply points out the obvious facts of our own world, is it too much to question what the film is really trying to explore?
Film Beat Editor Ben Luu can be reached at benllv@umich.edu.
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