Kirsten Dunst’s 2012 mirror-world movie Upside Down was slammed in the US, but Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s anime fable makes nifty work of a similar world-inverted motif.
At heart it’s a coming-of-ager about two teens and their oppressive elders, with the clever spin that youngsters Age and Patema occupy alternaworlds with opposing gravitational pulls.
The themes (rebellion, prejudice...) and panto villains lapse into broad strokes, but Yoshiura’s world-building doesn’t: from the texture of the underground havens to the idea that our leads have to – literally – cling to each other lest gravity tears them apart, it’s a wonder of detail and ingenuity.
