It’s a strange feeling to be among the earliest audiences — and who can tell just how many more such a disturbing, hard-sell film will reach — for a project destined for notoriety. But then S…
” inspires nothing but strange feelings, from unnerving horror to shocked admiration to visceral disgust to that specific type of disorienting nausea that comes from the fractional delay between your eye processing a well-composed image, and your brain comprehending the implications of the actions so coolly depicted.
Indecipherable, abstract, staticky images flicker and jiggle, while a glitchy digitized noise finally coalesces into a voice. It’s a child’s voice occasionally edged with auto-tuned artificiality, recounting the memory of a childhood summer’s day spent with her Papa. We turn a corner in a wood and are suddenly beside a backyard pool and watching that very day play out.
This example of techno-pedophilia comes to us with wires crossed and synapses shorting out in the attempt to understand its ramifications. Elli is a machine which has no function other than that for which it was designed, but if a machine has no agency or interiority , where are the preprogrammed memories that comprise the voiceover coming from? Where are these “thoughts” being thought? Further, it is a machine in the shape of a young girl, played by a young girl.
Robot Elli wanders off into the forest, apparently following a disembodied voice, and becomes lost. She is picked up by a passing motorist, who reacts with surprise but not shock when he sees she’s an android, implying they are a fairly commonplace part of this seemingly near-future society. And he brings her back to his aging mother , and with a few quick adjustments, turns Elli into Emil, a replica of his mother’s brother who died tragically young some 60 years previous.
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