Future Me (2024)

Future Me

Once, Steven Spielberg said, “I’ve avoided therapy because movies are my therapy.” You might have seen the meme where those words are accompanied by the phrase “Men will literally become the most famous film director in history instead of going to therapy.” It applies to Vincent Boy Kars’ Future Me, a film as brutally honest as a therapy session about not ‘getting real’.

Kars made two previous films in which he blurred reality and fiction and examined the role of the director (the so-called Millennial trilogy). In Independent Boy he took over his friend’s life thinking that maybe he, as a director, had some tools to cut through whatever malaise or rut he was stuck in. In Drama Girl (reviewed here) he explored his main actress’s grieving process by putting her through a series of increasingly brutal and uncomfortable exercises that blurred reality.

Now, in Future Me, he turns the camera on himself again. Once more looking at fact and fiction by making a film about his own grieving process around his dad’s death. Again trying to stop himself from avoiding vulnerability/emotion; a ‘boys don’t cry’ narrative instilled by his perfectionist father. One tool is having actors like Martijn Lakemijer portray him or people in his life.

Sometimes Lakemijer acts as an alter ego; other times Kars himself is asked to act out memories/feelings with cast members playing various family members. Eventually another director called Peter takes over and proves himself sometimes almost sardonic figure who really likes putting Vincent emotionally through wringer. What is real becomes increasingly blurry.

The blurring between fact/fiction feels painfully real at times like watching someone’s therapy session. Like when actor Martijn Lakijemer reenacts a sex scene Vincent had with his girlfriend where he became so controlling it felt like he was directing her in the moment (she rightly called him out on this). Like later in the film where she calls him out again for using process as avoiding mechanism.

If this is a film about sometimes narcissistic tendencies of millennials and a boy in desperate need of therapy fleeing into fiction, the film itself might represent that flight in part. In fact the film at times seems as cold & clinical as Vincent is afraid he might come across. At times it’s uncomfortable like watching someone else’s therapy session, but also at times we lack necessary context/attachment to themes/story which would make us really feel/understand his pain.

I know it sounds like I’m damning this film with faint praise, but the truth is that I left before the Q and A started for a good reason. Not only do I believe in ‘the author is dead’ theory and that a film should be self-sustaining as an entity, but also because it felt to me like every card was put on the table. It’s finished. The film is at arm’s length and too close for comfort. Too impenetrable and too honest at the same time. This push-pull quality gives it life. It also made me ask some hard questions about myself and my relationships with others.

Staying alone with the movie in silence for an hour or two, then writing this review has shown me why Kars uses film-making as therapy; many of us nerds do use fiction to escape from having to look too closely into the mirror, after all. By the end of it he’s completely exposed himself emotionally speaking. He knows full well that such a journey could easily be called masturbatory seeing how during opening credits his alter ego jerks off in the shower.

But somewhere between these turbulent emotions battling each other just under surface level calmness we find ourselves sinking down into deep waters indeed where whirlpools become pools become ponds until eventually even still surfaces stir up ripples which reflect back audience members uncomfortably so what am I saying? Vincent running away from therapy by making fiction itself becomes therapeutic; may have started this review off with Spielberg meme but Future Me shows all of us could benefit from little more than talky-talky sitting down sessions (and maybe watching movies).

Watch Future Me For Free On Gomovies.