Tropic (2022) Sci-Fi as a deeply personal take on Male Pride (Review)

There can be no avoiding weeks like this – weeks where other movies run in fear of the magnitude of the big release of the week, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part Two. However, there is also something sly about weeks like this, as you can find counter-programming, antidotes to the magnetism of blockbuster cinema. Here, that is the job of 2022’s Tropic, directed by Edouard Salier. This humble sci-fi drama is making its UK home debut after a successful festival run at Fantastic Fest, Sitges and Glasgow via Blue Finch Films.

In 2041, in France, Twin brothers Lázaro (Pablo Cobo) and Tristán (Louis Peres) are part of a training programme to send young astronauts into space as part of the European effort to colonise the great beyond. The twins are very close – the same goes for their young mother, Mayra (Marta Nieto). However, all of that is upended when the brothers head out one night to train breathing underwater. They are both in a pond and while Tristan is holding his breath, something extraterrestrial lands in the water – contaminating it with a noxious green residue. Lazaro escapes, but unfortunately, Tristan doesn’t – an accident which causes his skin to grow Body Horror-style and his faculties to diminish. As a result of this accident, gone are the two brothers aiming to traverse the stars together – now, one brother is proud, guilty and competitive, and the other is taken out of space school and placed into an adjacent disabled facility. Salier’s Tropic is not interested in grand sci-fi narratives but in the character study of lives irreparably damaged.

The Sci-Fi may be surface only, but the genre aspirations of Salier & Mauricio Carrasco’s script are no less vital because of that. Like Daniel Kaluuya & Kibwe Tavares’s The Kitchen (from earlier in 2024), this sci-fi is not fantastical but of a world comparable to ours. Just cleaner. One vital factor of its sci-fi backbone gets little more than a passing mention. Space is mankind’s last chance, and there are suggestions that Europe is in fierce (hostile even) competition with other major territories. While keeping those world-building notes at a distance makes the world feel more lived in for this Latino family in France, it also leaves much open to interpretation. And as often with such ambiguities, mileage varies. Are Salier and Carrasco opening a geo-political or ecological dialogue? Maybe?

The more defined identity of Tropic is of a deliberate, humble character study that is eminently relatable to someone with years of experience as a carer for another family member (as I do). The sci-fi justification may see an entity invade Tristan’s flesh, making him host to something other than himself. His face hides behind a mask, his skin with a near mountainous texture, and something green looms ever closer whenever he experiences heightened emotions. But in a more tangible sense, this could be a horrific accident of any kind or the onset of MS or MND (or the like). Dreams and ambitions never change, but the bodies that inhabit them do. That throughline is what the script is concerning itself with, and where that pride, that sense of competition directs itself after a monumental loss (of self).

The conflict in Tropic is not between brothers or fellow students but between Lázaro, his love of his family, dreams and expectations. Embodying that stress is Pablo Coro, who offers up an incredibly restrained and mature performance just as impressive as the more physical performance that Louis Peres brings to the table. In the case of non-disabled actors playing disabled characters, it’s a larger issue for the film industry to address. It’s unfair to blame individual movies, especially smaller indie sci-fi projects. Returning to that physical performance from Peres and the barely concealed rage and confusion from Coro, they also manifest in Mathieu Plainfossé’s cinematography. 90% + of this movie is handheld to represent the two brothers’ mental well-being. The only time the camera remains still is in intertitles that come to take on a different meaning once you parse together fragments towards the end and a question that one brother asks of the other after an altercation in a skate park (an altercation that pays off the growing infection and the looming green presence that hides within).

For me, modern blockbuster culture is a little too full of smug bluster to appeal – but I look forward to the release of each one as they provide a home for fascinating titles like Tropic that would get lost in the mix otherwise. While far from perfect, look no further than neglecting the hyper-competitive streak between students that vanishes for much of the movie only to re-emerge at the end apropos of very little. It’s has that slow anti-pacing that defines much of modern european cinema, and handheld cinematography will forever be an acquired taste. Yet this deeply personal tale of conflicting brothers, illness and the cost of chasing success cuts through the blockbuster bravura and helps sci-fi represent something relatable and heartfelt with the sort of emotion rarely felt since Mark Romanek’s frustratingly under-the-radar Never Let Me Go (2010).

Rob’s Archive – Tropic (2022)