Mars Express on France 4: a SF summit made in France (review)

Murders, androids, augmented humans and trafficking of all kinds: a dizzying animated film with an inimitable visual flair, to be seen this Tuesday evening in the clear.

The history of science fiction cinema is such that France has rarely been able to match the Americans and the Japanese. But in 2023, at the Annecy festival, a radical SF proposal, Mars Expressleft its mark on the genre.

Three years later, and while the 2026 edition of Annecy Animation Festival is currently being held, the film is broadcast this Tuesday evening unencrypted on France 4 and visible now in streaming on the France Télévisions website.

A unique work not to be missed, because Mars Express is part of the spectacular comeback of French genre films (Acid, The Animal Kingdom, Vincent Must Die, etc.). It is the year 2200, the red planet has been colonized for a long time and a private detective, accompanied by her android partner, seeks to elucidate the disappearance of a cybernetics student. An investigation between Earth and Mars that will shake the entire civilization… Raised at the Métal Hurlant school, director Jérémie Périn (noted thanks to the animated series Crisis Jung and Lastman) very naturally imposes a universe populated by intelligent robots, villainous murders, shenanigans, corrupt institutions and a lot of second degree (the phrasing of the voice actors, deliberately very “French”, creates a quite hilarious dissonance).

Generously hard boiled science fiction, which dialogues with Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner without being crushed by these untouchable references. The dizziness arises as much through the staging – the insane action sequences as the calm moments are filmed with the same mania – as through a fairly inimitable visual touch, at the junction of glacial realism and exaggerations typical of Japanimation. After that, French SF will never be the same.

Mars Express, by Jérémie Périn, with the voices of Léa Drucker, Mathieu Amalric, Daniel Njo Lobé… Duration 1 hour 25 minutes