Panacea

Caught this at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival in Feb 2020. It's a tidy, well made film that draws you into a family battling the mental illness of the mother, who believes she is a sentient android who has malfunctioned. But maybe she is a human who has constructed an elaborate backstory to hide from the pain of being a person who cannot love and who cannot stop beating her on-the-cusp of manhood son. The material clues suggest we are in our time, not some future echoing the television series "Humans," but we are looking at the world through the eyes of the narrator, the mother, and she sees clues about her android origin everywhere. By the time the movie reaches its conclusion, you've been drawn into the madness, the uncertainty of what is human, what is programming, and profound discomfort for the mom and her interior life. The dedication at the end of the film makes it clear the filmmaker wanted to share his experience with his mother and her struggle. He succeeded. The intimate cinematography is a case study in how closeups and lighting can draw an audience into the interior life of the characters. The actors all do a fine job, particularly Marta Krol in the role of the mother and Marieta Zukowska as her peer, counterpart, alter ego or therapist -- when you are in psychosis, those around you play many roles.