French writer-director Cédric Ido mined personal experiences growing up in a Gallic slum for this sharp-looking, offbeat mixture of apocalyptic science-fiction and R-rating-level drama. Like eating escargot, it is somewhat of an acquired taste but also provides a few truly visionary moments.
In a blighted Paris housing project, aspiring competitive runner Daniel (Max Gomis) is closely tied to his brother Joshua (Steve Tientcheu), a neighborhood heroin dealer despite Joshua's disability; he has been a paraplegic ever since a rooftop boyhood fall. As an adult, Joshua is secretly a brilliant inventor who has tricked out his wheelchairs to enable his crimes.
With the advent of a new, Japanese-influenced street gang calling themselves the Ronin, dealing a synthetic drug called "doku" ("poison," in Japanese), there seems less of a future for aging gangsters like Joshua and just-out-of-prison peer Christophe (Jean-Baptiste Anoumon). Daniel's girlfriend expects him to join her on a flight to Canada and a new life away from the mean streets. But the three main characters are on a collision course with the Ronin.
All this unfolds under a foreboding, rare planetary alignment that produces weird weather, strange celestial sights, and predictions of cosmic doom due to increased gravity. It also makes the Ronin evolve from biker thugs to a catastrophism cult.
Science fact-checkers will tell you that such planetary alignments have happened before and created no mayhem other than tabloid headlines and trite B-movie disaster flicks (VHS-heavy collections may still hold 1982's fear-mongering The Jupiter Menace). Ido's concept of "gravity" here is more metaphorical, a ubiquitous force that keeps people—people of color, especially—confined to a bleak arc of marginalization, lawbreaking, and prison. The tragedy is compounded by the obvious point that Daniel, Joshua, and Christophe are intelligent, talented men with potentially so much more to offer.
A breathtaking, protracted action-climax of The Gravity, in fact, reveals that Joshua is much like Marvel Comics' super-scientist Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man. Another kinetic fight scene pits Anoumon against an unexpectedly ferocious woman opponent (alas, female characters here tend to be one-note joykillers).
By the transcendent finale, Ido's ball-and-chain burden/symbolism of race and relationships, and fate either takes flight or collapses. Viewers should be ready to debate in a coffeehouse, preferably in berets smoking gauloises.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
International collections with an emphasis on French cinema, as well as the Pan-African experience, are recommended for The Gravity. It is worth noting that in interviews filmmaker Ido has said that his major influence was the vibrant cinema of South Korea, with its outsized emotions, action, and SF-edgings. One can discern a Seoul vibe, perhaps much more so than hip-hop.
A sitting-side-by-side-on-the-shelf comparison could be made with another widely circulated title from France, the 2004 District 13 (B13), which also aspired to be futuristic Parisian dystopian sci-fi, but gave viewers more of a multicultural urban fight-fest. Between the two of them, The Gravity pulls in the deeper thinking, even with the ultimate mystification.