Delightful in just about every way, writer-director Liz Manashil’s SPEED OF LIFE still manages to ask more than a few uncomfortable questions about who we are and where we’re going as individuals, as a society, and as humanity. They’re the kind of questions that David Bowie asked in myriad songs over a long career until his ultimate metamorphosis in 2016. The death of Bowie plays a big role in this movie. It literally rips a hole in the universe. Though it may not get the mechanics of quantum physics exactly right, SPEED OF LIFE gets everything else about how the universe works just about perfect.
Edward and June are a couple. Edward is played by Ray Santiago (ASH VS EVIL DEAD), June is played by Allison Tolman (EMERGENCE), and also by Ann Dowd (THE HANDMAID’S TALE). Their similar physical appearance (the 30 years that separate them notwithstanding) is only part of why this is great casting. Their merging of mannerisms and quirks is the other. Neither actor is playing themselves or other characters, both are playing June. When we first meet them on the eve of Bowie’s demise they are young, in love and in trouble. June (Tolman) is devastated by Bowie’s passing while Edward searches for something funny to say, “…it’s hard to make a joke about cancer,” says Edward. “Why would you want to?” questions June. The argument gets worse from there. By the time Edward inadvertently steps through the inter-dimensional portal that happens to be in their bedroom, it’s looking like this relationship is done.
Twenty four years later June (Dowd) is nearly 60 and about to be put out the pasture, almost literally. A lot has changed in the two-plus decades since Bowie died and Edward disappeared. This is a society where when you turn 60 you are retired from society. It’s also a society where “work” per-say, is not obligatory as robots do most things while younger folks — consider their options. Interesting that there are no robots in this movie, it only takes someone mentioning them to make them so. That’s good writing and good acting. Indeed the only physical hi-tech conceit in the movie is a small, glowing orange orb present in just about every physical space a human can occupy, including toilets. It tells you everything you want to know and many things you don’t. And it knows everything about you, including when your 60th birthday is – a day June does not relish. It’s not quite a dystopian society, but it is slightly Orwellian.
That Edward will be back isn’t a surprise for either us (the audience) or June. We know he’s coming back and she’s been waiting for him to come back since the night Bowie died. Indeed, June has put her life on hold in anticipation of Edward’s return. Never married. No kids. She’s even been ignoring the romantic reproaches of her next-door neighbor (Jeff Perry), who hangs around her like a lovesick puppy. Then – Edwards comes back – still young and with nary an idea that any time as passed. Now we have a movie that ponders the big ideas that Bowie sung about – and a bit more. Bowie died before Trump was elected and we knew Alexa (and the like) are really listening to us, whether we want them to or not.
June, for so many years, has romanticized her relationship with Edward, her one true love who mysteriously disappeared into a hole in the universe. Or – has she? Was the one moment we saw of June and Edward on the night Bowie died the whole of their relationship – or just one moment? And what of love? Does it transcend time and space – and wrinkles? What about the past? If you could go back in time and change a moment – would you? What of Bowie? Would he know the answer to any of these questions? I have no idea, but I like the imaginative way Manashil envisions the near future and the way she sorts out issues of love across time and space without violating either the first or second laws of thermodynamics.