Starring Eddie Marsan and Raffiella Chapman

Written and Directed by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper

Signature Entertainment, out now

In a bleak post-apocalyptic world, 13-year-old Vesper attempts a planet saving bio-hack while trying to keep her father alive.

If the expression déjà vu describes the sense of having experienced something before, then surely déjà terminé could be coined for the sense of having seen twenty too many miserable post-apocalyptic dramas, where everyone is dressed in dirty anoraks, now all melding into one.

This is a shame for a film like Vesper because if I wasn’t so weary of the genre, I may well have enjoyed it a lot more. The ambition and vision of the creative team, working with a tiny budget is certainly to be admired, but, sadly there are a lot of dirty anoraks (why does no one ever raid a designer store for their post-apocalyptic wardrobe these days? I’m sure they used to in the 1980s) plus a lot of gnomic, info-dump dialogue, all delivered in a miserable monotone, which get in the way of what could have been a far simpler tale of a father and daughter’s quest to save the planet’s bio-organisms… or a girl’s friendship with a servanty-androidy thing… or a girl’s battle to outwit her evil post-apocalyptic uncle… or something.

The phrase ‘too much information’ is pertinent here. There’s a lot of twittering on about ‘The Citadel’ and ‘The Pilgrims’ and ‘The Jugs’ and other mysterious off-screen entities, and something about trading seeds and children’s blood which I couldn’t follow at all. Nor did I really understand what was going on with Eddie Marsan’s character. It was one of those films which gets really quite interesting every ten minutes or so, before wandering off on another track, a bit like trying to engage a distracted, slightly introverted teenager in conversation when they’re at their mopiest on a wet Sunday afternoon.

I was willing the film to pick a story and stick with it, but when the budget Darth Vaders arrived in the final reel, I’m afraid I gave up hope.

Verdict: Despite being too long and too slow, Vesper definitely has its moments, but I was left feeling disappointed that they didn’t amount to anything very substantial. 5/10

Martin Jameson