Some reviewers invoked Lynch and Haneke, but those directors' involving subtlety is completely absent. This comes off more like the worst Cronenberg you've ever seen (an imaginary one, not A Dangerous Method), combined with the portentous, barely-comprehensible and boring aspects of Christopher Nolan.
The script is deeply pretentious and clunky. How Seydoux ever agreed to this is beyond me. The writers fail to develop the AI material beyond a reflection of the most basic contemporary fears. It's the type of SF that gets made by people who've apparently seen & read very little of the genre - which mixing up the various timelines at random cannot disguise. But it's not just the script. The set piece imagery consists of hackneyed tropes from SF past (flooded & deserted streets; a dollmaker's workshop) which only serve to remind you how much better the themes were dealt with by Ballard, Fassbinder, Scott etc.
The music is inappropriate and too loud, coming & going to no effect, as randomly as the scenes themselves.
Perhaps most cripplingly, the love interest guy is annoying and not believable as Seydoux's lust object. There's a scene featuring several minutes of heavy breathing that made me lol. I walked out soon afterwards. The film must have been an hour and a half in by that point, and showed no signs of staggering to a close.
The three stars are all for Seydoux, who needs a better agent.
The script is deeply pretentious and clunky. How Seydoux ever agreed to this is beyond me. The writers fail to develop the AI material beyond a reflection of the most basic contemporary fears. It's the type of SF that gets made by people who've apparently seen & read very little of the genre - which mixing up the various timelines at random cannot disguise. But it's not just the script. The set piece imagery consists of hackneyed tropes from SF past (flooded & deserted streets; a dollmaker's workshop) which only serve to remind you how much better the themes were dealt with by Ballard, Fassbinder, Scott etc.
The music is inappropriate and too loud, coming & going to no effect, as randomly as the scenes themselves.
Perhaps most cripplingly, the love interest guy is annoying and not believable as Seydoux's lust object. There's a scene featuring several minutes of heavy breathing that made me lol. I walked out soon afterwards. The film must have been an hour and a half in by that point, and showed no signs of staggering to a close.
The three stars are all for Seydoux, who needs a better agent.