Two moviegoers’ lives get intertwined when they realize both are starring in the movie the other is watching. Yes, that’s a confusing sentence. But you’ll figure it out as you watch Makota Ueda’s wonderfully trippy You Are The Film, now playing as part of the Fantasia Film Festival.
A young woman buys a ticket for a movie. She visits some friends at a business next to the theatre, and they talk about their art. She sits down in an empty auditorium. The movie starts.
A young man buys a ticket for a movie. He visits some friends at a business next to the theatre, and they talk about their art. He sits down in an empty auditorium. The movie starts.
The man is on the woman’s screen. The woman is on the man’s screen. They stare at one another, sitting, waiting for the next bit. He says, “This is boring.” She replies out loud, “That’s my line.” He looks at her. He replies. They realize they can communicate across the screen.
That’s the setup for the Möbius strip of a film, “You are the Film,” written and directed by Makota Ueda, making its North American premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival. Ueda has made a name for himself at Fantasia with award-winning time-travel based shorts in Beyond the Infinite in Two Minutes, River, and Rewrite, and now expands to a not-quite time-travel but still as twisty and reality-altering narrative of recursion and connected universes. Ueda doesn’t stray too far from the shorts, with You are the Film clocking in at just 67 minutes. It’s short, but it keeps the film tight and doesn’t overstay or stretch such a premise. Kudos for the restraint.
Similar to fellow Japanese film Your Name, You Are The Film finds two people in need from across an unusual expanse and finds interesting ways for them to communicate, grow, and help one another with their specific issues. It’s all quite clever and wholly engaging as the two worlds collide and the characters shift and figure out, but it goes much further than the mere grabbing premise.
The young man and the young woman, Madoka and Kazuma, or Marika Ito & Kai Inowki, for their fantastic performances, in character and action, find ways to interject themselves in the other’s story. Since they are watching the other as a film, they can watch the story unfold and report, or show things to the “camera” to give info. It’s quite delicious as they learn how it works. Especially in how either film unfolds. They might start the same, but they are very different films. Without showing the film’s surprises, but enough to whet the appetite:
He’s in a crime drama. She’s in a Sci-fi film (outside of the overall film working in Sci-fi). How Ueda writes and works with the genres of either is a blast. Both of the “films” work full-on to the tropes of their respective genres. Clearly, completely, and straightforwardly overly tropey takes, like the purposely cheesy bad movie within other media. I mean that as a positive, as it’s a ton of fun running with it. The whole thing is very funny, everyone is very game to all the strangeness. 
Ueda shoots it with a bumping energy. With the short run time, he gets as much as he can in. He uses a small number of locations (mainly across the same 4 businesses in a plaza) to great effect. The tight spaces allow a flowing camera of long takes moving in and about the spaces. It pulls in and engages with a precise design.
Amid all the fun, You Are the Film is a film of taking control of your own story, not letting it get away from you. Find the inner sense to not let it happen and unfold in the ways outside of your own hands: step up and take it yourself. But especially in finding those connections to help create that destiny. Only in working together can we move forward and tear down the walls of the film of our lives.
You Are the Film is a small-scale triumph of working and kneading an interesting idea, getting the most of it with a tight control of concept and getting out while the getting is good. Madoto Ueda moves into features with You Are the Film with a confident ease. Bravo.
You Are the Film is presented as part of the 30th Fantasia Film Festival, occurring in Montreal from July 16th through August 2nd.