Clones in space: Toni Collette’s larger-than-life sci-fi outing
Toni Collette stars alongside Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo in a new science-fiction comedy in which clones are part of everyday life.
After Toni Collette’s strong turn as an ambitious prosecutor in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2, the 52-year-old Australian actor now takes nastiness to another dimension in Bong Joon-Ho’s film Mickey 17 – quite literally set in outer space.
Collette plays the forceful Yifa, married to Mark Ruffalo’s buffoonish despot and failed politician Kenneth Marshall. She is truly the one who pulls the strings as they hatch a plan to not only accompany so-called Expendables into space in 2054, but to duplicate or re-print them when they stuff things up.
Robert Pattinson’s Mickey arrives on the scene as Mickey 17, the 17th incarnation of Mickey Barnes, who had been lured into a bad investment on Earth. As a means of escape, he had signed up for the expedition to the distant planet of Niflheim, where Marshall and Yifa intend to form a colony operating like a religious sect. He is assigned to do fatally dangerous jobs, falls in love with fellow crew member Nasha (Naomi Ackie) and is finally re-printed as Mickey 18.
The sci-fi film, based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel, Mickey7, marks South Korean director Bong’s first movie since 2019’s Cannes and Oscar-winning Parasite. The Hollywood Reporter calls it a “pitch-dark comedy about colonisation”.
After the film’s recent world premiere in London, Mickey 17 screened at the Berlin Film Festival where Collette admitted that she had agreed to do the movie with Bong before reading the script.
“I’ve never done that in my life, but when this guy calls you, you just say yes,” she said, before admitting she’d also never read a fantasy novel. “Bong is a true original, a proper auteur, a visionary, an incredible leader, but an even better collaborator. It’s fun. He’s compassionate and generous and treats everybody with respect. You feel so trusted and that is a really good feeling.”
‘She’ll be lovely to your face then punch you in the stomach’
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In the story, Collette’s Lady Macbeth-like Yifa, who was newly created for the film, is a hardened killer.
“I think she’s the smiling assassin, everything’s very presentational,” commented Collette at the film’s London premiere. “She’ll be lovely to your face and then will punch you in the stomach. She’s a total control freak, a complete manipulator.”
Rather than trying to help people, as leaders should, Yifa is obsessed with things like sauces for food, as is her husband.
“It’s such a main priority, and it just says so much about their privilege and their position, because they are such narcissists and so elitist,” Collette noted in Berlin. “I think everybody else on the ship probably got to bring a toothbrush, but I (Yifa) brought the whole house and I focus on all the luxuries in life. Sauces are at the top of the heap.”
Collette and Ruffalo both have big hair and big toothy grins and it’s hard not to compare Marshall to Donald Trump. Yet Bong insists he was inspired by dictators from the past.
“I had some people I took as a reference, such as bad Korean politicians or other politicians, but not actual politicians right now,” he commented.
Ruffalo, 57, speaking at the London premiere, noted that the film is “so relevant for today”, despite being shot in late 2022. “We’ve been waiting for so long for this movie to come out. It’s so crazy and bonkers.”
Collette and Ruffalo’s smug married couple have a distain for people who are not married. She loved working with Ruffalo.
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“I had been a fan of his for so many years and just getting to work with him and getting to know him – he’s the funniest man on the planet and had me in stitches day in and day out,” Collette said. “I completely adore him.”
Added Ruffalo: “Those two people are as deeply in love with each other as anybody. They’re Romeo and Juliet, but the really evil versions. (Working with) Toni is like going to acting heaven and working with an angel. She’s one of the greatest actresses ever to have graced the screen.”
Collette told UK channel Weegie Bored that Bong helped them create their on-screen relationship.
“They’re a nightmare couple but they’re really sweet with each other. They’re completely in love and can’t stop touching each other. In fact, the initial direction we got from Bong was, ‘Can you make it feel like they’ve just been in bed together or they’re just about to hop into bed together?’ They’re complete narcissists and live in a bubble unlike everyone else on the ship.”
British actor Pattinson, 38, who plays Mickey, said Bong had been on his bucket list of directors to work with since he started acting. As with Collette and other cast members, Pattinson said yes before knowing what the film was. “Everyone just wants the experience,” he summed up.
Bong, who also directed Okja, Snowpiercer and The Host, was initially attracted to the concept of human printing in Ashton’s novel.
“It’s a concept that’s kind of not working (in the film) and it’s very tragic and funny at the same time. When I thought of Robert Pattinson, knowing that I’d be printing him out endlessly, I thought, well, he’s very printable,” Bong said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” a smiling Pattinson responded to Bong in Berlin. “It was a fascinating experience playing opposite yourself in the film. Obviously, you do one half of it and then the other half and just hope that it’s going to fit together. It was fascinating to see the final product.
“I think there’s something quite moving with Mickey, where he is trying to process what he is and what he’s made of. At the same time, he has a kind of relationship with all his previous selves. When Mickey 18 comes along, he has to come to terms with the fact that these other selves are part of him, and that they’ve also died. He has to figure out why he’s the one to survive.
“Even though the film is couched in this comedic, kind of farcical world, I think it addresses a question that most people have to deal with at one point or another when they deal with some kind of traumatic event–or even just living, asking themselves, ‘Why do I exist?’”
Mickey 17 opens in cinemas nationally on March 6.
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019, she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema.