Well, it is science fiction, woman-centric in concept and execution. It features an abundance of Tilda Swinton.
So it should be something worth watching. Yes? But I have to warn you off. This is written and directed by someone with such a shallow understanding of the issues involved that it is a self-parody. There are some truly interesting concepts that could have been explored if the science in this science fiction was actual science — or even if the concepts had been coherent and the writing good.
The general idea here is that seduction, identity, experience, cinema and something she calls "technology" are coupled in a way that matters and is interesting and embodied in a "virus." Also that what it means to be a woman and to desire desire circumnavigates these four points of a compass.
Although Tilda is more than capable of layered seduction, what we have here is manikin attraction. There is no hint of real seduction, either among the characters or with the audience. There are copious references to films, important and influential films. But they might as well have been posters on the wall as they are not integrated in any way with the film we see.
The real problem is that the idea of self-aware beings, vlogs (here called "portals"), human and computer viruses, DNA, and semen are somehow conflated as if they somehow were equivalent.
Tilda stars as a young woman in a university near San Francisco who is a programmer/AI researcher. She is a hidden genius who is profoundly lonely, so creates three clones of herself, independent robots consisting of code made flesh. The three each "are" a primary color and are named so. Tilda plays these women as well.
At night, they "download" selected seduction scenes from movies as dreams, but are generally bored as they are cooped up in our genius's basement. Oh, our genius is named Rosetta Stone. One of the replicants, Ruby, goes out at night — Jess Franco-like — and harvests semen from males she seduces by repeating scenes from movies. The semen is needed to feed the clones and to reinforce their immune systems. Those systems are "infected" with the virus that created them — the self-replicating virus being what brought them into being. The men in question become infected with this virus, which leaves them impotent and with a bar code on their foreheads.
I'm not making any of this up.
After several dozen cases of infected men show up, some goofy agency is called that inspects these sorts of things, and a gaggle of incompetent males is flummoxed. At the end, the key investigator is seduced by our heroine (the real one), while our vampiress falls in love with a guy who works on a "duplicating machine" (what we would call a xerox).
Oh, the investigative agency calls in a disenfranchised expert: "Dirty Dick" played by a sixty two year old Karen Black, who scopes things out, but does not interfere.
So much of this is designed to resonate with me, just by the accident of what I do and who I am. But it is such incompetent storytelling, so lacking in seduction and coherence, so empty of insight that it harms, a disease. "The Love Virus," is better, as bad as it is.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
So it should be something worth watching. Yes? But I have to warn you off. This is written and directed by someone with such a shallow understanding of the issues involved that it is a self-parody. There are some truly interesting concepts that could have been explored if the science in this science fiction was actual science — or even if the concepts had been coherent and the writing good.
The general idea here is that seduction, identity, experience, cinema and something she calls "technology" are coupled in a way that matters and is interesting and embodied in a "virus." Also that what it means to be a woman and to desire desire circumnavigates these four points of a compass.
Although Tilda is more than capable of layered seduction, what we have here is manikin attraction. There is no hint of real seduction, either among the characters or with the audience. There are copious references to films, important and influential films. But they might as well have been posters on the wall as they are not integrated in any way with the film we see.
The real problem is that the idea of self-aware beings, vlogs (here called "portals"), human and computer viruses, DNA, and semen are somehow conflated as if they somehow were equivalent.
Tilda stars as a young woman in a university near San Francisco who is a programmer/AI researcher. She is a hidden genius who is profoundly lonely, so creates three clones of herself, independent robots consisting of code made flesh. The three each "are" a primary color and are named so. Tilda plays these women as well.
At night, they "download" selected seduction scenes from movies as dreams, but are generally bored as they are cooped up in our genius's basement. Oh, our genius is named Rosetta Stone. One of the replicants, Ruby, goes out at night — Jess Franco-like — and harvests semen from males she seduces by repeating scenes from movies. The semen is needed to feed the clones and to reinforce their immune systems. Those systems are "infected" with the virus that created them — the self-replicating virus being what brought them into being. The men in question become infected with this virus, which leaves them impotent and with a bar code on their foreheads.
I'm not making any of this up.
After several dozen cases of infected men show up, some goofy agency is called that inspects these sorts of things, and a gaggle of incompetent males is flummoxed. At the end, the key investigator is seduced by our heroine (the real one), while our vampiress falls in love with a guy who works on a "duplicating machine" (what we would call a xerox).
Oh, the investigative agency calls in a disenfranchised expert: "Dirty Dick" played by a sixty two year old Karen Black, who scopes things out, but does not interfere.
So much of this is designed to resonate with me, just by the accident of what I do and who I am. But it is such incompetent storytelling, so lacking in seduction and coherence, so empty of insight that it harms, a disease. "The Love Virus," is better, as bad as it is.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.