Patema Inverted

A scientific accident has broken the world's gravity; for some people the direction has reversed. Patema comes from a community living underground, and when she goes up she risks falling into the sky. In the world above, a boy called Age catches her. Neither can move without holding on to the other. The subject is not science fiction but direction being constructed from whose position you look. The film's best invention is the camera turning over: the same scene reads as a rescue from one view and a fall from the other, and the viewer keeps having to work out which way is down. The form pushes that idea all the way. The state above has declared inverted people sinners and punishes them by releasing them into the sky, a punishment that is genuinely horrifying as an image. Yasuhiro Yoshiura directs and wrote it himself. It was not made under a large studio and was produced with a relatively small team. It played at festivals outside Japan and drew attention for its premise. Yukiyo Fujii voices Patema and Nobuhiko Okamoto voices Age. Who it is for: viewers who like animation built on an idea and visual invention. Who it is not for: anyone after character depth; the narrative is thin and the political background is roughly sketched.