Imagine an surreal alternative world where luck isn't random. Where every single person on Earth emits a specific harmonic which determines their success in life. The higher the frequency, the more luck you have. You never miss a train - in fact it will arrive just as you step onto the platform and you'll probably find a dropped £50 note as you do so. You'll always meet the perfect partner. You'll always get the right job. Things just have a way of working out for you. Conversely the lower the frequency you have, the more unlucky you are - you will be clumsy, forgetful and keep just missing out on things. You will be doomed to a menial life. Your frequency determines relationships, connections, and life worth - and means that everyone knows what they can achieve and their place in society. It's all very structured and orderly and predetermined.
There are two fundamental issues though. The higher your frequency, the less you feel, with the very highest being emotionless savants with no empathy for the rest of the world. Secondly, people from opposite ends of the frequency scale can never be in close proximity for more than a minute - otherwise the world starts to rebel and strange phenomenon spontaneously occur - random items fall from the sky, earthquakes shake the ground, glasses shatter, etc, etc. Opposite forces repel each other. So what happens when a boy and girl from these two worlds meet, and keep meeting? Can you change your frequency? Can you alter your destiny?
Isaac-Newton "Zak" Midgeley (Daniel Fraser), is a lovable but incredibly low frequency schoolboy who meets and is totally smitten with top of the class Marie-Curie Fortune (Eleanor Wyld). Her frequency is stratospherically high, which means she's brilliant but has the emotional abilities of a robot - although being a genius means that she can fake some normality (in one scene she declares "I experience no joy. If you ever see me smile, laugh, frown, or cry, I'm pretending."). Even so, she *wants* to feel love. Ignoring his parents and teachers telling him that he will never be able to be near her, Zak wants to challenge fate and attempt to win Marie's heart. As the characters grow from kids to teenagers, Marie arranges for them to meet for exactly one minute per year as part of an experiment. Every time, Zak smiles and flirts, and Marie focuses on the science and what she can learn about their frequency repulsion before it brings down disaster from the sky. In between these brief encounters, Zak devotes himself to finding a way to change his frequency to bring them closer together - roping in best friend Theo (Owen Pugh) to help him. Eventually as a young adult, Zak seems to have managed this impossible feat - Marie begins to feel, Zak grows a little luckier and the pair can touch. Unfortunately his discovery has much wider, sinister, world changing ramifications and a history that goes back centuries...
Again, I can't reveal much more without spoiling the plot - but I can say that fans of Stephen Moffat's style of Doctor Who with things "hidden in plain sight" will find much to love here. The events of the film are told from three different perspectives and key scenes are replayed several times to reveal that what you thought you knew was based entirely on what you *didn't* know and new information totally rewrites your view of what has gone before. It's very, very clever and I loved it. Writer-director Darren Paul Fisher has created one of those rare original science-fiction films that has a fully realised world of unique ideas at its core, rather than flashy special effects and it truly challenges the mind. The ambitious film touches on a lot of important themes - class division, free will versus fate, the uncertainty principle, the law of attraction, the awkward feelings we all have as teenagers when we are trying to find our place in the universe and how it works and the healing power of....ah well, that would be telling.
In a decade of prequels, sequels, remakes and reboots, it's so refreshing to find a low-budget movie this original. If it can be compared to anything I guess it would be "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" with it's deft combination of sweet romance and humour overlaid onto a highly imaginative concept. It's well worth 105 minutes of your time. You might even discover what "OXV" means.
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