Early *R U There* Reviews from Cannes: Variety Likes It, Others Not So Much

R U There, the Dutch/French/Taiwanese film about Second Life, gaming, and life in the digital era I wrote about last week, just screened in competition at the Cannes film festival, and so far, the reviews are decidedly mixed. Here's write-ups from several film industry trade publications:

• Variety has the best review of R U There I've seen so far, calling it "delicately handled" and "quietly poetic". More: "The film's subdued tone is maintained through to the end, privileging [the hero's quiet transformation over a more facile boy-meets-foreign girl love story. Ace [cinematographer] Lennert Hillege lays on the shallow focus, reducing many things onscreen to somewhat blurred 2D entities and thus visually approaching the look of Second Life."
• The Hollywood Reporter calls RU There "a great short stretched into a feature that cannot sustain the tension for which it so earnestly strives." Somewhat ironically, the Reporter reviewer seems to like the scenes in Second Life best: "The serenity that pervades their 'Second Life' environments -- rarely if ever yet seen on the big screen -- wonderfully renders yet another way we can suspend time and even life nowadays."
• Screen Daily is the least impressed, saying "the film does little to convince us of its message that the real world is more vital than the virtual one".

Pictured, by Reuters' Yves Herman: RU There stars Stijn Koomen and Huan-Ru Ke, with director David Verbeek (known as Cameraman Haiku in SL.)

Comments

[Frans Charming]

"the film does little to convince us of its message that the real world is more vital than the virtual one"

I like this quote, it kinda signifies a paradigm shift of the reviewers. In the past they might have said it failed to make the virtual world just as important.

But here the reviewer speaks from a position of equal importance and isn't convinced by the film that the real goes above the virtual.

The film is trying to convey the message that we should pay more attention to RL, and fails thus for this reviewer in that objective.

It might signify a growing change in attitude, that we need less to worry about defending the virtual.

[Marcos]

I just watched this movie, and i liked it. a lot

it was subtle and poetic.

loved the Half Life scenes as well as the real ones..

good movie to watch.