France / Canada • 1997 • 90m •    • Directed by: Jean-Michel Roux. • Starring: Tchéky Karyo, Julie Delpy, Chick Ortega, Féodor Atkine, Maria de Medeiros, Pascale Bussières, James Hyndman, Suzanne Champagne, Alain Chicoine, Catherine Colvey, Jean-Philippe Côté, Claude Desparois, Christian Drolet. • Music by: Mick Harris, Mick Morris, Treponem Pal.
      Humanity lives in fear of an alien invasion: for the first time in history, a coded message from outer space has reached planet Earth. A few months later, the 12,000 residents of Sepulveda vanish. Authorities immediately quarantine the area, a free zone where drug trafficking and illicit sex were the most common businesses. When strange magnetic phenomena are observed, military authorities grudgingly concede the possibility of an alien offensive, and send professor Larsen -a renowned astrophysicist specialized in UFOs- to lead a quick investigation in the ghost town.
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***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** After watching a film badly dubbed in English, I almost passed this strange science-fiction and also English dubbed comedy, a fact that makes it lose 50% of its impact (though we cannot speak here of self-representation with an international cast that includes Turkish Tchéky Karyo, French Julie Delpy and Féodor Atkine, Portuguese Maria de Medeiros, and Canadian James Hyndman and Chick Ortega). I am glad I saw it because it was quite a find! (MILD SPOILERS) In a strange country, there is a district called Sepúlveda, where all depravities are legal and welcome. A woman who looks like a travestite turns to be the Major and inaugurates a club called The Thousand Wonders of the Universe (all sexual), while a scientist (Karyo) is trying to decipher an alien message. Then you find out the Major is Féodor Atkine in drag, a "something" that changes from male to female every time it wants to (by inserting something into its brain, via a metal perforation on its skull), and has a secret agenda, unknown to the President, played by Medeiros. When 12 thousand persons disappear in Sepúlveda in one night, after a punk sees an intense light in the sky, the President thinks it is related to aliens and to find a solution she sends Karyo, leading a group that includes his assistant (Ortega), the thing's daughter (Delpy) and a military hunk (Hyndman). While chief of Defense Colonel Vega (Gabriel Gascon) trips on drugs, the group finds a go-go dancer's corpse, so the President joins the party, because she is able to read dead people's retina and screen their memories on a plate filled with water and a convenient solution she carries with herself in a tiny bottle. I will not describe the strange happenings nor give up the ending, but it reminded me when a young man -while discussing "Y tu mamá también"- argued that sexual ambiguity was more man's natural state than monosexuality. I really don't know if that is the case, and I don't have arguments to assert the opposite; I just reached that conclusion from experience. In a very funny way, the film tells of what ambisexuality leads to (being strictly scientific, the term bisexuality refers to the embryo's condition of having both sexes, before monosexuality appears in the fetus; so when we talk about the ambiguous sexual orientation, it's more precise though less common to use the term ambisexuality). Surely this is not a S-F masterpiece, and your cultural life will not be affected if you don't see it, but I recommend it -at least it will entertain you, make you think and chuckle, which is a lot these days. This was the first feature by Jean-Michel Roux, who resurfaced in 2002, with "Enquête sur le monde invisible", a documentary about the Irish tradition of magical creatures, that opened in Paris in October.
Review by Edgar Soberon Torchia from the Internet Movie Database.
