LE MONDE'S OPINION – MUST SEE
A central figure in the 2000s Korean cinema revival, Bong Joon-ho has established himself, a quarter of a century later, as a master of contemporary cinema, a great formalist as well as a lover of strong genre cinema, whose terms he redefines in a new fresh way. Three films (undoubtedly his best) should serve to refresh your memory: The thriller Memories of Murder (2003), monster movie The Host (2006), and social revenge film Parasite (2019), which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. His latest opus, Mickey 17, is his third English-language science fiction work (after Snowpiercer and Okja), this time inspired by an American novel, Mickey7, by Edward Ashton.
One can safely assume, from the numerical inflation between the book's title and that of the movie, that Bong Joon-ho did not make the change for nothing; not so much, fortunately, in terms of more imposing numbers as in terms of baroque panic. This is because Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson) is the 17th incarnation of a certain Mickey Barnes, an unemployed pastry chef of relative intelligence who, after going bankrupt by opening a macaroon shop, agreed to be used as an "expendable" for a space mission, aimed at colonizing the frozen planet Niflheim and exploit its resources. In other words, Mickey, a modern Tantalus, a guinea pig used for the whims of the mission's scientists, dies over and over again, each time immediately being put back into service for the next mission by a 3D bioprinter – though it leaves him a touch different.
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