Immortel (ad vitam) (torrent) is one of four films shot entirely on a “digital backlot”. All of the actors are filmed in front of a green screen and then digital backgrounds are added later. The other three films featuring this are: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sin City, and Casshern (torrent). Immortel is based on a comic series by Enki Bilal, who is also the director. The movie is beautiful to look at with flying cars and an aggressively vertical New York City to match. The cast includes very few human actors and the computer generated actors can be quite jarring with their low level of detail. In the movie’s world everyone is sporting some sort of artifical organ or other enhancement which may explain the generic looking CG actors. There is a lot going on in this movie, but the plot boils down to this: Horus is about to be exiled and is allowed to return to earth for his final seven days. His itinerary:

1. Find suitable male host body — implants give him gas
2. Impregnate a specific female
3. ?

Yep, this movie is crap. Granted it looks great and is obviously based on something substanstial, but it is so poorly excuted that I can’t recommend anyone watch this for reasons other than the design/novelty of it. I will be buying the graphic novel since I was intrigued by the setting and the storylines they attempted to tell, so I guess some good will come of this. I’ll let you know about Casshern when I get a chance and I plan on catching Sin City this weekend.