“Neptune Frost” makes unlikely company with non-binary director Jane Schoenbrun’s “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” in departing from the clarity of storytelling to depict the impact of technology on LGBTQ people. Narrative cinema increasingly seems unsuited to the traumas of the last few years and the psychological changes wrought by social media. It might be possible to write off “Neptune Frost” as a particularly leftfield example of tech-bro optimism if its narrative weren’t so closely based in the realities of neo-colonialism and class exploitation, with lyrics like “hack into land rights and ownership…hack into ambition and greed.” “Neptune Frost” envisions a particularly African queerness, where one song’s chorus celebrates the fact that there’s no need to choose between identifying as a girl and boy and another lyric says “think Black, then think gay.” A broadcast by a white news anchor is never shown without a host of glitchy effects, but even the banal image of television snow is shot through with color rather than remaining black and white.
The color and lighting were carefully designed. Drones and floating coltan rocks were evidently created with CGI. “Martyr Loser King” evokes Martin Luther King, but it undergoes a further twist to become the basis for the “Mutalusa Kingdom.”Īs technological power interfaces with spiritual power, the film avoids sticking to a clear perspective. Even at the very start, “mine” has a double meaning. Williams brings a poet’s sense of wordplay to the script of “Neptune Frost,” which is especially impressive since the film is spoken in five languages and his lyrics are translated outside English.
Even the scenes in the mine are coded with reddish-brown dirt - this may be a realistic version of how they look, but it’s still stylized and full of symbolism, as the color hints at dried blood shed by the mine’s workers. It exudes a love of color and a belief in its infinite variety. But the aesthetic behind the film is not simple. The special effects of “Neptune Frost” are simple, with trippy computer animations made of colorful shapes representing communion with the machine world. If the effects of living with destruction and loss runs through the film, it sees them as the starting point for something more positive. “Neptune Frost” creates beauty from extremely lush colorful lighting and such simple means as sci-fi props made from neon tubes, bicycle wheels and circuit boards.
Production design is one of the most striking qualities of “Neptune Frost.” Films and TV shows by white artists frequently use a combination of low and hi-tech, such as flickering TVs and old-fashioned computers in decaying buildings, to suggest post-apocalyptic scenarios. Listening to “MartyrLoserKing” first will help explain its approach - songs like “Down For Some Ignorance,” originally released on it, are re-purposed here. It was originally planned as a cycle of three albums and graphic novel. The world of “Neptune Frost” began before this film and spirals out around it.