Showing @ Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, until Thu 22 Dec

Mike Cahill / USA / 2011 / 92 mins

The power of extrinsic salvation is the subject of feature debut director Mike Cahill’s quasi-science fiction movie. After a tragic car accident in which young student Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) kills the family of college scholar John Burroughs (William Mapother), the pair’s lives become entwined while the discovery of a Twin Earth raises questions about the future of human society.

Cahill’s ghostly film is wrapped in a rich, blue-tinted exterior, the eerie storyline of which clashing hard against the indie beauty of its aesthetic and soundtrack. The frequent shots of ‘Earth Two’ in the background act as a symbol for escape; from the tragedy of her past to the uncertainty of her future, Rhoda finds herself searching for some kind of redemptive meaning. This is what Cahill seems to be getting at: how our choices can lead us down unknown pathways and how we can confront their outcomes. Some of these messages and symbols are a bit jarring however, as the idea of another Earth identical to our own prevents us from encountering something external, a paradox of the philosophical subtext beneath the film’s surface. So everything almost becomes internalised by Cahill’s characters and it’s hard to tell whether he intends to do this in the film, leaving a lot of unanswered questions at the end of it all.