Though sexual transgression is implied and never explicitly shown, there are a handful of images that will, to be sure, be too much for some - like a full-frontal nude shot of Elli, rendered entirely in CGI, in which papa washes a detachable body part like he's casually cleaning out the coffee machine pod drawer.īut Wollner negotiates these images with a carefully calibrated perspective. Those desires certainly materialise in discomfiting ways here. In an era of incredibly lifelike sex robots ( whose sales have increased during the isolation of 2020), Wollner's film leans into the worst-case scenario of its father and 'daughter' relationship, wondering at technology's ability to indulge mankind's darkest impulses.Ĭoverage of the film when it premiered at Berlinale led to the film being seized on by Infowars and conspiracy theorists. (2001) to Spike Jonze's Her (2013) and Michael Almereyda's Marjorie Prime (2017), in which lifelike holograms were employed to negotiate generations of grief.īut The Trouble With Being Born arrives at a point when these machines are no longer the domain of speculative, near-future science fiction where increasingly sophisticated AI tech is already being used in everything from theme park simulacra to emotional support robots - not to mention our hyper-intelligent everyday devices, whose lack of anthropomorphic features belie their role as essential life companions. The humanity (or lack thereof) of technology is hardly new terrain for cinema, itself a so-called empathy machine, although recent years have seen a growing body of films reckoning with the varied possibilities of artificial intelligence as emotional substitute: from Steven Spielberg's soulful A.I. Wollner told Jason Di Rosso that one of the film's central questions is: "How lifelike does an object have to be before we apply our moral standards to it?" ( Supplied: Potential Films) With her uncanny valley features (a spooky echo of Georges Franju's 1960 horror film Eyes Without a Face), the wig of a hair salon mannequin, and a wardrobe of adult gowns and dresses, she's a piece of lifestyle tech that's crossed the line into the service of her father's very human dysfunction. The girl - played by a 10-year-old actor under a silicone face mask, CGI enhancement and the pseudonym Lena Watson - is a child android, fashioned and named after the man's long vanished, and possibly abused daughter Elli. Through this din we see a middle-aged man (Dominik Warta) lounging by the poolside of his leafy designer house, living a tranquil existence with what appears to be his pre-teen daughter.īut something about the situation is clearly very off. A disorientating opening shot that appears to be a first-person perspective is revealed to be that of a disembodied, free-floating presence, an awakening digital consciousness that hovers around the film's subjects while the soundtrack glitches and crackles to life like the alien frequencies of Under the Skin (2014). The director dubbed the young actor's voice and used a stage-name in the credits and a silicone mask to protect their identity.
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