Mr. Nobody (Jaco Van Dormael, 2009)

In a 2092 where the human race has conquered ageing, the last living mortal man recounts his life story to a reporter. He's an unreliable narrator, giving three alternative courses of events with different wives, branching out from butterfly wing-effects at critical junctures.
The deus ex machina is represented beguilingly as a falling leaf and the film is packed with similarly telling images. It rewards attentiveness on the part of the viewer and is exquisite to look at. It also plunders ideas and scenes, in no particular order, from 2001: A Space Odyssey,  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Truman Show, Sliding Doors, Rashomon, Little Big Man, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Fountain, Dark City, Requiem for a Dream and Slaughterhouse-Five, and this list is by no means exhaustive. It seems to admit defeat under the weight of filmic history by resorting to a salvage-by-collage technique and frequently falls prey to whimsy, and its protagonist, Nemo, is an emo even by name.
And yet it captivates too. Jared Leto may not be the most charismatic casting as Nemo - the more intense Jake Gyllenhaal would probably have been first choice - but he's no hammy Jim Carrey either. And Van Dormael can just about be forgiven in the final analysis for his looting, since all the splicing is executed so adeptly that some moments of real beauty are engendered. It has a poetic impact Michel Gondry has never achieved and Darren Aronofsky only managed with his first outings. Bizarrely, it has received almost no international distribution since its release.

7/10