Low-budget limitations work in this French thriller’s favour, in which Earth is turned upside down

At one point in this smart, low-budget French disaster movie/post-apocalyptic thriller, teenager Ben (Lucas Ebel) pees into an unplumbed toilet dumped in the wasteland. It’s a moment emblematic of Frédéric Jardin’s film; it makes little practical sense, but is packed with arresting images and proceeds with something close to the dream logic of Luc Besson’s debut The Last Battle, and the great comic-book artist Moebius.

Ben is on a Caribbean family cruise with his revoltingly-in-love parents, Julia (Émilie Dequenne) and Tom (Andreas Pietschmann), and his just-plain-revolting older sister, Cassie (Lisa Delamar). After nervy whales graze their yacht, satellites fall burning through the atmosphere and a cataclysm begins, they awake to find their boat stranded on top of a promontory in an infinite desert. Go-getter dad Tom, who likes solutions, quickly finds the answer with his compass – the Earth’s poles have reversed, dumping the oceans where the land previously was, presumably killing millions, and leaving the boat high and dry.