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Extraterrestrial: 2011 AFI Film Fest

By Ryan Mason · November 5, 2011

You might not immediately guess that a filmmaker would follow up his debut feature – a heady, complex time-travel yarn – with a light, decidedly European romantic situation comedy set predominantly in one apartment. At least, if you did, you might not imagine it being much of a success. But the moment that Spanish writer/director Nacho Vigalondo popped up at the front of the theater to introduce his latest film, Extraterrestrial, at the AFI Fest on Friday night, it was clear that he was born for this.

Vigalondo is a self-professed nerd. He’s even a bit of a hipster as evidenced by how he ran over to a store on Hollywood Boulevard in the middle of the screening to pick up some geektastic graphic novels, and the fact that his film ended with a Magnetic Fields track. He’s also hilarious. At the premiere in theater six at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, he had the not-quite-sold-out audience rolling in their seats with his solid yet clearly second-language English, despite opening with how nervous he was because he didn’t know much English. I’m no linguist, but if you’re able to tell jokes to an American crowd and have them clapping with laughter, you know the language.

Anyway, it was a tough act to follow even when that ended up being his own film. And for over half the runtime, Extraterrestrial upstages Vigalondo’s electric stage presence. While it’s entertaining, with fantastic performances from the small cast and snappy dialogue and situations from the taut script, it falls victim to the second act woes and just can’t quite keep the energy going for all 90 minutes. It’s a shame because it could’ve been great but, and this isn’t much of a knock really, it settles as comfortably good. And good is, well, good.

Extraterrestrial’s premise is rather simple: after a drunken one-night stand, Julio wakes up in the woman’s apartment to find that, overnight, aliens invaded, putting him and his reluctant new lover into quite the uncomfortable union. Vigalondo plays up all the awkwardness in the beginning as Julio doesn’t exactly want to leave all that quickly while Julia (plenty of recurring jokes about how they have essentially the same lame) can’t get him out soon enough. But, then the gravity of their situation piles on and, while Julio is a mistake that she’d like to pretend never existed, Julia can’t exactly toss him out onto the desolate streets with a huge flying saucer looming overhead. Things only get more complicated when her nosy, creepy neighbor shows up. Oh, then her boyfriend comes home.

In case there was any confusion, despite some similarities, Extraterrestrial is not the Spanish version of Skyline. Thankfully. Vigalondo showed that he could craft a head-spinning tale with his ambitious debut, Timecrimes, but here shows that he has a deft touch for comedy and character. One of the best aspects of this flick is that the jokes come organically out of the characters rather than being random sight gags or cheap gross-out yucks. The comedy comes from the situation and the clearly defined wants and needs of these particular individuals. It moves with way more energy and tension that you’d expect for a film set mainly in a couple rooms of a tiny apartment with only four characters. It’s fitting then that only when Vigalondo’s script edges over into that heavily plotted realm that made his first film such a hit does it lose steam.

Luckily, there’s still plenty enough to enjoy here to make it a worthwhile experience. And at 90 minutes, even when it lags, you’re not sitting there too long before either it picks back up enough – dropping in a couple unexpected and welcomed poignant moments – and then it’s over. Apparently Vigalondo made this film (after only three drafts on the script, which, at first sounded impressive, but after seeing the finished product, makes me wonder if the tail-end of the second act couldn’t have used another pass or two) because his other project, Windows, was taking so long to come to fruition. He also is hoping to drum up some studio support while in LA for his Oceans 11-with-supervillains movie that he co-wrote with Mike Millar. Regardless, based on first Timecrimes and now Extraterrestrial, whichever one Vigalondo sends to the screen next, I’ll be looking forward to it.