The Congress (2013)

Actress Robin Wright (played by Robin Wright) is told by her agent (Harvey Keitel) that's she messed up her own career by turning down plum roles and sacrificing her career for the wrong men (an arrow to Sean Penn?) and raising children. A studio head (Danny Huston) offers her a deal: human actors are obsolete and he will pay Wright to scan her body, take 10 years off her age and use her digital self for the next 20 years but she can't act anywhere during that time. Jump to 2033 where, in order to renew that contract, she enters a state where humans aren't allowed and must be animated and thus a surrealistic adventure into a hellish future begins. Yet another film that made the film festival circuit and opened overseas in 2013 and early 2014 and only now getting a U.S. release. Director Ari Folman's first film since his Oscar winning WALTZ WITH BASHIR is an ambitious mixture of live action and animation with a brilliant performance by Wright at its center. The scene where she is being scanned and required to display all the possible human emotions may be the best piece of acting I've seen all year. The film is uneven to be sure and Folman may have bitten off more than he can chew (but not Wright) but it's going into unchartered territory and the film so enterprising that I was pulling for it. Not all it could have been but I'm more than grateful for what we got.There's a strong underscore that I was positive was from Michael Nyman so imagine my surprise when the end credits showed it was composed by Max Richter. With Paul Giamatti and Jon Hamm (voice only).