TEXAS, USA — In 1989 moviegoers wondered if a man and woman could have sex and still be friends. In 2023 the question is a little more complicated: Can a man and woman have sex and still be friends if they’re adrift hundreds of millions of miles away from their respective spouses and have no one else to lean on?
Popular spacefaring dramas like “The Martian” revolve around complex plans of science-y mumbo-jumbo viewers have no choice but to go along with. SXSW selection “If You Were the Last,” about two astronauts space-marooned for three years and counting after their mission goes awry, is intensely refreshing in that the complexity is emotional in nature instead of technological. Most immediately, that grants a narrative longevity not afforded to other movies of the “Cast Away”-in-space subgenre, meaning the central drama of “If You Were the Last” won’t date as quickly as, say, “Gravity." It might be far simpler to rescue stranded astronauts once the year 2050 rolls around, but the human mind’s ability to comprehend hyperisolation likely won’t see such an evolution.
But director Kristian Mercado’s satisfying genre blend is also wonderfully self-aware about its subversion. Look no further than the opening dialogue between Adam (Anthonie Mackie) and Jane (Zoë Chao), which makes an amusing bit out of the aforementioned Ridley Scott epic—was rescuing Matt Damon really worth all that time and effort from humanity? Even if you know this film's premise, it’s still disarming when the camera pans across their colorful, comfy-looking living room to show the stars outside and Jupiter not too far away. NASA might band together to save Damon, but three years have passed without any sign that it’s willing to do the same for Adam and Jane.
You can’t really fault him, then, when Adam sparks a debate by wondering out loud (if only because there isn’t anything else to wonder out loud about) about the merits of he and Jane hooking up. What if the clothes stayed on? What if it made things awkward? What if they don’t find each other attractive?
The frankness and curiosity of these conversations – buoyed by sleek editing underscoring how often they’re thinking about it even as they insist it is all merely an intellectual exercise – is both disarming and satisfying. Though it's a bit of a comedown when things take a predictable course for more earthbound conclusion in the final stretch, it's nonetheless easy to admire the long game Mercado is playing with his specific style and tone.
If the galaxy-brain twist on the “When Harry Met Sally” dilemma provides the ignition to “If You Were the Last,” the malleable chemistry between Mackie and Chao gives this SpaceseX-comedy ample thrust. Best known for various TV comedy projects, Chao finally lands a lead film role that makes excellent use of her easy-come, easy-go charisma; here she glints with youthful energy burnished by cosmic unease. When it comes to Mackie, check your expectations at the door: Though he’s experimented in recent years with hard scifi and drama as a reprieve between Marvel assignments, he’s borderline unrecognizable here. His comic delivery is buoyant, the hints of sadness palpable.
The foundational trick of this movie is tonal in nature: Despite being lightyears away from Earth with diminishing hopes of rescue and a spaceship that is halfway to hell… it turns out Adam and Jane have made quite the life for themselves. Catastrophe has given way to movie nights, spontaneous dancing and tending to the greenhouse chamber where Adam has embarked on his final frontier of scientific endeavor: marijuana berries. So gleefully do the movie’s early scenes play out that despite the isolated setting and day-to-day mundanity, your mind doesn’t immediately think, “Ahhh, COVID parable.”
Instead, “If You Were the Last” bounces along thanks to clever writing (the script comes from Angela Bourassa) and the tactile aesthetic of a “Blue’s Clues” episode, for once encouraging moviegoers to wonder if one of the most terrifying scenarios imaginable might not be all that bad, so long as you’ve perfected a recipe for space-made Pop Tarts.
“If You Were the Last” could’ve coasted by on the delights of this juxtaposition, and certainly the audience still can. But doing so would ignore the layers of Bouarassa’s script; the deeper you dig, the more whimsy gives way to a deep-seeded existentialism. The movie’s abundance of visual quirk – the rocketship depicted as a cardboard cutout, the planetary orbit mimicking a rickety middle-school diorama – belies a slightly darker suggestion that Adam and Jane have completely lost their minds by the time we’re introduced to them (hence the computer that chirps at them through a GameBoy-like interface).
Perhaps they’re on a collision course for each other even before they see it for themselves. But as “If You Were the Last” proves, unthinkable situations have a way of leading to the most obvious of connections. That gives the film a certain emotional gravity that even “Gravity” didn’t muster.
"If You Were the Last" premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival and is awaiting U.S. distribution.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Zoë Chao, Missi Pyle, Natalie Morales
Directed by Kristian Mercado; written by Angela Bourassa
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