Here is a French indie sci-fi in which a woman called Elsa (Megan Northam) mourns her brother Franck, who is missing and presumed dead in space, which makes him rather less likely to be found again. Elsa works at a care facility for elderly people and lives with her mother and younger brother; they are all stuck in the kind of limbo that comes with unresolved family mysteries. One day, Elsa encounters Franck once more – as a voice. It seems that an alien presence may be able to return him to his home planet, if Elsa is prepared to help them out with a little favour: the aliens require four people to be procured for them in exchange for Franck’s return. The people won’t be killed, but their personalities will essentially be erased or dampened to become hosts for the extraterrestrials.
A Hollywood blockbuster would perhaps resolve this dilemma quickly, as a subplot in a larger invasion plot, but here the dilemma is the meat of the film, a kind of thought experiment, and the challenge of having Elsa plausibly wrangle with her decision is what enables a fine performance from Northam. The film is interested in whether different lives have different value, which is a thorny question. You might think it is obvious that they are all equal, until you realise that perhaps you may feel differently about saving your spouse or baby over a serial killer, say. What that elevates animator Jérémy Clapin’s live-action debut is that it gives these pub chat hypotheticals a human face and emotional subtlety; this isn’t something like Saw, a film that plays gory games with deadly consequences. Instead, it uses its supernatural premise to explore some very human behaviour.
• Meanwhile on Earth is on digital platforms from 25 August
