Yeah. I could be writing about Inception right now. You were probably expecting me to do that. But, you know, bloody well everybody is writing about Inception right now and so I've decided to instead write about the other high concept science fiction film being released Friday. You know, the one that absolutely nobody knows anything about thanks to its distributor making the absolutely brain numbing decision to open against what is not only by far the biggest film event of the summer but also a film that plays to 100% the exact same audience that this film does. Memo to E1: Counter-programming only works when you open your little film against higher profile competition that plays to a different crowd and thanks to this one bit of scheduling you have just guaranteed that Jaco van Dormael's fantastic Mr. Nobody will die a swift and scarcely noticed death.

Jared Leto plays the titular Nemo Nobody. In a near-future world where science has stopped human aging, Mr. Nobody is an oddity. He is the last of the original, unaltered race. He is old. And soon he will die from old age, a fact that has made him a media phenomenon and a much sought-after interview. As the old man lies in his hospital bed waiting for the end to come he casts his mind over his past and here we find something else that makes Mr. Nobody different: He has lived several simultaneous, parallel lives. Literally.

Playing heavily with concepts of parallel universe theory and the notion that the decisions we make trigger multiple realities as different versions of ourselves, van Dormael takes us to a moment of childhood trauma, a moment when Nemo was forced to choose between his parents and couldn't. He simply froze and refused to decide. And in that moment Nemo became a sort of quantum event. Because he refused to definitively choose any one path he gained the ability to experience several simultaneously, drifting through three different versions of his life simultaneously. Different wives. Different lovers. Different families. And Nemo himself drifting between each of them as though through dreams.

The simplistic (read: not so good) version of Mr. Nobody is Gwyneth Paltrow star vehicle Sliding Doors - I confess that I didn't have to look that up, which means that I have lived a sad life -- but in van Dormael's hands these heady concepts become beautiful, ethereal stuff, a study of love and tragedy and the immense potential of each life. The entire cast - Sarah Polley, Rhys Ifans and Diane Kruger also star in the international production - is simply fantastic and van Dormael handles them all with such a deft touch that the entire experience, dreamlike as it is, is nonetheless surprisingly easy to follow. Van Dormael shoots simply gorgeous film and Leto's performance here just really makes me wish he'd quit his band and get back on screen more often.

So there you have it. It's going to get slaughtered at the box office by Inception but that doesn't mean that Mr. Nobody isn't one hell of a deserving film as well.