This Korean animated film on Netflix straddles rom-com and space adventure
Lost in Starlight begins on Mars, with an astronaut in a busy, vibrant housing facility for the team members recording a message to her daughter back on Earth. On the wall of her bunk, she has a small crayon drawing of an astronaut that her daughter made for her, and a vinyl record hanging up. But during the recording, a tremor shatters the entire facility, collapsing it on all of the astronauts inside, killing the entire crew.
Fast-forward some 25 years, and we meet the now-grown daughter who was to receive that message -- Nan-young. Despite losing her mom in that tragedy on Mars, Nan-young has pursued a career at NASA, as well, and she plans on being a member of the crew that will make humanity's first return voyage to the Red Planet since her mom and the others were lost. But her supervisors are worried about her -- not because she seems to emotional, but because she doesn't seem emotional enough.NASA removes her from the mission, believing that she never fully processed the loss of her mother, and that the psychological effects of arriving on Mars might prove overwhelming or unpredictable.
Upset by losing her spot on the team, Nan-young begins going through some of her mother's things, and finds an old, broken record player that she had decorated with crayon drawings as a child. She tries to find a repair shop that can tackle the record player, but has no luck until she literally bumps into Jay as she's going into a store and he's coming out. The record player falls to the ground, and Jay says he repairs machines like that. Some coincidence.
As Nan-young and Jay begin spending more time together, she opens up to him about how much she loves music, and one song in particular really helped get her through the long nights of studying in college. But she got the song off of a file-sharing site, and never knew who the artist was. She begins playing the song, and Jay confesses that he actually wrote the song with his old band, and he never knew anyone had heard it. Again, some coincidence.
As Nan-young continues her scientific work at NASA, she encourages Jay to get back with his old band and explore writing and performing again. He's reluctant to do so, but does reconnect with his old band mates, and agrees to play guitar live. Then suddenly, Nan-young makes a breakthrough involving plant-life on Mars, and earns a spot back on the crew. The public announcement goes out before she can tell Jay, and his feelings are hurt, leading to a rift before the mission.
Once the Mars mission begins, the film begins intercutting between their two narratives. Nan-young has to do a reconnaissance mission on the surface, and a windstorm comes up, seeparating her from the rest of the crew, shorting out her coms, and threatening her oxygen supply. Back on Earth, Jay has agreed to play and sing with the band at a festival date, and since he hasn't sung on stage in years, he's really nervous.So, one character is literally fighting for her life on an alien planet, and the other...has stage fright.
This is where the movie lost me. The stacking up of coincidences early in the film was a little clunky, but I could get over it. For a good portion of the movie, it does play much more like a romantic comedy with a bit of sci-fi flavor on the periphery, so if it hewed a little more closely to rom-com meet-cute conventions, it didn't feel out of place. And the movie does a couple interesting things with the idea of the bifurcation of self in the face of past trauma, and finding ways out of that. But the climactic juxtaposition of a literal life-or-death, high-drama space adventure vs. taking a deep breath and singing a song in front of what looks to be about 100 people...it just didn't track for me.
In the end, I found myself reminded of movies that plowed similar ground, but which I enjoyed much more. Movies like The Martian or Your Name, where in the former dealt with survival on Mars and the latter with romantic partners trying to communicate across impossible distances, felt like they were big inspirations for a lot of the action of the film, and though I was reminded of them, Lost in Starlight never resonated with me the way those films did. Even First Man, about Neil Armstrong trying to compartmentalize his child's death while embarking on the moon mission, felt a little more emotionally impactful while dealing with very similar material.
--
Nerds coefficient: 6/10
Posted by Vance K - resident cult-film reviewer and co-founder of nerds of a feather, flock together
