This week there’s a wealth of new trailers landing for projects which have been waiting to debut at Cannes. Yesterday, we had the first clip from James Franco’s Faulkner adaptation, As I Lay Dying. It was definitely interesting but it’s nothing compared to this first look at the Stanislaw Lem adap, The Congress.
Robin Wright, who easily stands among cinema’s handful of gifted actresses, stars in this latest flick from Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman. The source novel on which it is based, The Futurological Congress serves as a foundation for the film. Echoes of A Scanner Darkly stir amidst fresh ideas in this first trailer. It assembles a host of unique elements; image cloning, intertextuality and dystopia to great success. There’s not been a film this exciting released in a good long while. An idea such as this barely resembles Hollywood’s typical sci-fi output. It’s that impressive.
In the film, Wright plays an onscreen version of herself. As an over-the-hill actress, she sells the likeness rights of her younger self to Hollywood. What follows is a loose adaptation of Lem’s novel, and features dazzling animated sequences set twenty years into the future. The official synopsis reveals:
A loose adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s “The Futurological Congress,” a 1971 black humour science fiction detailing the exploits of the hero of a number of his books, Ijon Tichy, as he visits the Eighth World Futurological Congress at the Costa Rica Hilton. The book is Lem’s take on the common sci-fi trope of an apparently Utopian future that turns out to be an illusion.
Along to help Wright are Harvey Keitel, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Danny Huston, Paul Giamatti and Cloverfield‘s Michael Stahl-David.
The Congress is scheduled to debut at the Cannes Film Festival this week. We’ll bring more news on the film when it’s announced.