Annecy Review: The wounds of youth remain fresh in stunning We Are Aliens

The isolation and strangeness of navigating adolescence is prime real estate for storytellers, and in Kohei Kadowaki's gorgeous and bleak We Are Aliens, the subject matter is explored in a fresh new way. Kids can be so fickle and cruel, not understanding the weight of their actions and the ripple effect of their choices. The wounds we endure when we young sometimes never heal, not completely. Maybe we carry the scars, or maybe they bleed anew each day. The people we are now are the product of so many people we were before, shaped and jettied along by everyone around us: family, teachers, and maybe most significantly, friends. We are each of us a walking history, and some of those histories are hard to look at straight-on.

Reminiscent of Kore-eda's masterful Monster, We Are Aliens gives us the chance to walk in multiple characters' shoes. We spend the first half of the movie with Tsubasa. We meet him when he's in third grade, still figuring out who he is. We watch as he moves tentatively through the world, often paralyzed, quiet, on the fringes of any scene playing out in front of him. He's quiet, careful. But once he runs into Gyotaro -- known as a wild card, a class clown, a "weird kid" -- they become friends in the way that only children really can: in an instant, in a way that's all-consuming. 

But as we skip through the years, following Tsubasa all the way through school and into adulthood, he becomes wary of Gyotaro. He sees the way other kids look at Gyotaro, and starts to wonder if there's something he's not seeing, too. He goes so far as to start questioning if Gyotaro might be an alien, on some kind of secret mission to earth. It sure would explain a lot.

A little less than an hour into the movie, the title finally appears (I am such a sucker for a late title drop), and we switch over to Gyotaro's experience of the events we've already witnessed: what it was like for him to meet Tsubasa, a burgeoning crush he nursed for kind classmate Konatsu, and the fallout of an accident (ish) that Gyotaro took the fall for, even though it wasn't his fault. In adulthood, Gyotaro lives along in a cramped, dirty apartment, works a job he hates, and looks at the thriving lives of his former classmates on social media, angry at how things turned out, feeling like he was personally wronged by Tsubasa (and maybe society at large).

This is a heavy watch. Moments of levity are few and far between, and the more we learn, the more tragic and thorny the story reveals itself to be. The film makes you feel for Gyotaro, but it also raises questions about how much blame he can pass onto others, and how much responsibility he needs to take himself for the way his life has turned out. Like, sure, he was dealt a shit hand, and his friend unceremoniously dropped him, but at a certain point, you have to become the captain of your own life, even if others have done their damnedest to take the wind out of your sails.

We Are Aliens is is one of the best-looking movies I've seen this year. I am a big fan of rotoscope, and here, it brings all the immediacy and detail that makes the events of this movie hit with the proper gravity. The characters' haunted facial expressions (there are a lot of close-ups of their faces) feel like the metronome keeping time of the years passing, as they bear witness to events and actions that are sometimes their responsibility, other times just something they have to respond to and deal with. The line work is expressive and alive, often contributing to the sense of grunge and decay, but also adding hope and light in rare moments of reprieve. There are a couple extra-stylized sequences that are jaw-dropping, coursing with extra energy and color. Gorgeous stuff.

And all the detail, the expressiveness, the deep feeling, really drives home the film's thesis, which is right in the title. All of us are essentially aliens as we move through life. Just like a traveler from another planet would have to if they landed on Earth, we, too, have to figure out how to navigate human society, mirror our peers so we don't stick out, learn the expectations and mores of our communities. It's a lot, and even more so when you're young and things can turn on a dime, and you don't yet have the life experience to make sense of it. What do you do when your best friend suddenly stops talking to you without a word of explanation? How do you come back from that? How do you not internalize that for the rest of your life?

Being a person is so hard, and we constantly make it harder for each other in a myriad of ways large and small. In the film's tremendously moving final moments, it feels like we're finally allowed to take a gulp of fresh air, that even when things have been horrible, there's hope for better days ahead. We can learn to be kinder, to forgive, and to become better citizens of the world. We can help those around us feel less like aliens.