Metropia directed by Tarik Saleh and released in 2009 takes place in a not-so-distant but Dystopian future. The world in 2024 is running out of oil and the underground train systems have been connected into a gigantic subway network beneath Europe.

First, we learn about the main character named Roger who's a worker of Trexx company. He lives with a tattooed Latin or Afro-American girlfriend in a residential block. Yet he's attracted to Nina, a beautiful blond woman who's a model he'd seen in ads and on a bottle of shampoo. He's bald, he doesn't need the shampoo but he uses it anyway because he's in love with the model. She's that type of a Russian spy or a femme fatal as known from many movies.
Roger is a sensitive but burnt out guy seemingly with a libido problem yet he hears a strange voice in his head every time he's in the tube. Thus, he decides to use a bike to ride to work. Because his intimate life is far from perfection, he suspects his girlfriend may have a love affair with 'a guy with dreadlocks from Finland' who's her new friend.
Once he sees Nina in the metro he follows her yet she lets him do it. He's still attached to his girlfriend however, even when Nina leads him to spend a night in a hotel (which night is a disappointment for both anyway).

It's not a dark love story though. There's a conspiracy behind Nina and Trexx. The company which owns the gigantic European rail network began to read and control minds through the citizens' hair (with a use of the dandruff shampoo). What was supposed to be used as an intelligent advertising system, became deeply abused by the company. They feel free to spy on people during their most intimate moments and share the system possibilities with a third party - apparently customers from Russia, Korea or China. For instance, they know that Roger's girlfriend masturbates but also Roger witnesses that she remains faithful to him.

Metropia uses a technique where actual photographs have been altered and heavily stylized in a computer program, then animated.* There are depressing visuals supported with an interesting plot - a matter of surveillance which as developed also in Orwell's 1984 and Gilliam's Brazil (in fact Metropia looks like a copy of the latter).
The movie cast includes Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers, Strange Days) as Nina (voice).

(Katarzyna NINa Górnisiewicz)

Source:
* Wikipedia





Watch the official trailer: