The Last Journey

There is something inherently romantic about a French astronaut driving a hovering, rusted-out 1970s sedan through a neon-soaked desert while the literal apocalypse hangs in the sky like a giant, angry blood orange. It’s a specific kind of vibe that Hollywood usually polishes until the soul disappears, but in Romain Quirot’s The Last Journey (also known as Le Dernier Voyage), the dirt under the fingernails is the whole point. While I watched this, my neighbor was power-washing his driveway, and the constant, rhythmic hum weirdly synced up with the film’s retro-synth score—a happy accident that only heightened the "low-fi future" atmosphere.

Released in 2021, this film arrived at a strange crossroads. We were deep in the "content wars," where streaming giants were dumping hundreds of millions into generic sci-fi that looked like it was filmed inside a sterile Apple Store. Along comes this French indie, shot largely in the Moroccan desert for a fraction of a Marvel catering budget, looking more inventive than anything we’d seen in years. It’s a film that understands that world-building isn't about explaining the physics of a warp drive; it’s about making sure the buttons on the dashboard look appropriately greasy.

A Road Trip at the End of the World

The setup is classic "Chosen One" subversion. A massive "Red Moon" is on a collision course with Earth, draining our resources and threatening total extinction. Humanity’s only hope is Hugo Becker as Paul W.R., a gifted astronaut who is the only person capable of surviving the electromagnetic radiation of the moon to plant a forest-saving bomb (or something to that effect). The catch? Paul has cold feet. He’s seen what the moon really is, and he doesn’t want to kill it. He goes rogue, hops in his flying car, and heads for the wasteland.

What follows isn’t a high-stakes space opera, but a melancholic, dusty road movie. Paul picks up a teenage hitchhiker named Elma, played with fantastic, jagged energy by Lya Oussadit-Lessert. Their chemistry is the heart of the film, providing a human anchor to a world that feels like a collage of Mad Max, The Fifth Element, and a dusty Polaroid of a 1980s comic book.

Hugo Becker plays Paul with a quiet, internalised trauma that works, even if the script occasionally leaves him with little to do but look pained. He’s being hunted by his own brother, Eliott (Paul Hamy), who has been "changed" by the moon in ways that feel very Akira. Their rivalry is Shakespearean by way of a graphic novel, and while the "superpowers" element feels a bit shoehorned into an otherwise grounded story, it adds a layer of visual flair that Romain Quirot leans into with gusto.

Style as Substance (And Why That’s Okay)

In the current era of cinema, we often complain about "CGI sludge"—that blurry, weightless look of modern blockbusters. The Last Journey is the antidote. It uses practical locations and clever production design to create a future that feels lived-in. The flying cars don't look like sleek futuristic pods; the flying cars look like they were assembled in a shed by a very talented hoarder. They sputter, they clank, and they have personality.

The film is a love letter to the era of "Analog Sci-Fi." You can feel the influence of Jean Giraud (Moebius) in every frame. The colors are bold—pinks, deep blues, and that omnipresent, threatening red. It’s the kind of movie where you want to pause every ten minutes just to look at the background details, from the holographic billboards to the weird, scavenged fashion.

Then there’s Jean Reno. Look, Jean Reno could play a disgruntled brick and still be the most charismatic person in the room. Here, he plays Paul’s father, Henri, a man obsessed with the mission at the cost of his family. It’s a small role, mostly seen in flashbacks, but Reno brings a gravitas that helps ground the more fantastical elements. His presence feels like a nod to the 90s French action cinema that clearly inspired Quirot, bridging the gap between the old guard and this new, experimental wave.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Act

Despite its visual brilliance, The Last Journey barely made a dent at the box office, clawing in less than a million dollars. Why? It’s the classic contemporary dilemma: if it isn't part of a "Cinematic Universe" or based on a best-selling toy line, it struggles to find air. It’s a "forgotten curiosity" because it dares to be a standalone French sci-fi film in a market dominated by English-language franchises.

It also doesn’t help that the film is stubbornly weird. It’s a "quiet" apocalypse. There are no massive city-leveling explosions here. Instead, the stakes are intimate and psychological. For some, the ending will feel frustratingly ambiguous—it prioritizes a poetic, metaphorical resolution over a hard-science explanation. But in a world where every plot hole is usually filled with twenty minutes of tedious exposition, I found the ambiguity refreshing.

The film originated as a short by Quirot in 2015, and you can tell it was a labor of love. It’s a movie made by someone who clearly spent their youth watching Blade Runner and Star Wars on worn-out VHS tapes and wondered why France wasn't making its own myths. It’s not a perfect film—the pacing stalls in the second act and the villain’s motivations are a bit "Comic Book 101"—but it has a soul, which is more than I can say for most of its big-budget peers.

The Last Journey is a beautiful, flawed, and deeply sincere piece of speculative fiction. It’s for the viewer who misses the days when sci-fi felt like a handcrafted dream rather than a corporate mandate. If you can find it on a streaming service or a lonely Blu-ray shelf, give it those 87 minutes. It’s a trip worth taking, if only to see what the end of the world looks like through a Gallic lens.

In a decade where we are drowning in content but starving for vision, this little French film reminds me that you don't need a billion dollars to build a universe. You just need a good eye, a bit of desert sand, and a hovering Citroën. It’s the kind of movie that makes me hopeful for the future of genre cinema, even if the moon is coming to get us.