Sophia Antipolis
Virgil Vernier’s follow-up to MERCURIALES (2014) is similarly set in a peculiar contemporary “non-place” zone of France. Sophia Antipolis is a techno-industrial park on the periphery of the tourist centers of the French Riviera. Created in the 1970’s and 1980’s, it was modeled on Silicon Valley in California as a massive architectural anomaly built to bring a different kind of industry to the region. Amid this backdrop, a series of tangentially-related sequences and narratives vignettes play out: women consult with a plastic surgeon; a young man gets inducted into a militia; a woman goes canvassing for the first time with an end-of-the-world spirituality cult she’s considering joining; another woman, Sophia, is already dead, having been killed in a warehouse fire under mysterious circumstances. Relying on non-professional actors, and the dull weight of the geographical setting, SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS unfolds as an assembly of everyday seeking and wish mis-fulfillment. With several tonal shifts along the way, playing with humor, boredom, and grim sadness, the films cyclically-arranged tales build up to a deep existential sorrow for the daily organization of contemporary existence. (Rachael A. Rakes)
- Dewi Kunetz - Kim
- Sandra Poitoux - Samantha
- Hugues Njiba-Mukuna - Christophe
- Bruck - Tarik
- Lilith Grasmug - Léna
- Virgil Vernier
- Simon Roca
- Tom Harari
- Jean Collot
- Olivier Viellefond
- Simon Apostolou
- Charlotte Cherici
- Florence Catusse
- Pauline Croce
MK2 Films