The Trouble with Being Born

Android sci-fi and memories. Androids that eat regular food and smell "cigarettes and sunscreen." Recalls elements of a superior US play/movie called "Marjorie Prime." The regeneration of androids with memories is scary in the real world. The first segment implies sexual relationships, though no explicit scene is shown. The relationship of animals with androids and humans are a minor subplot (a cat in one segment, a dog in the other. The reincarnated android is bizarre but typical of the horror genre; yet this is not a horror film. The title of the film is also the title of an unrelated book on philosophy by E M Cioran in French, written using aphorisms. "Marjorie Prime'' was comparatively a superior sci-fi film on memories and the importance of virtual human beings.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but as another review mentions this movie is too spineless to properly say what it wants to say and not interesting enough to keep my attention with the premises it sets up, the worst part is that the most poignant and inflammatory topic is one that i feel we are starting to see pop up in real life with AI, and this movie could have tried...something anything...instead...it did nothing... not giving it a ranking since i didn't finished it but if the last 30 minutes are as dull, in the plot as the first hour, and the camera work as bad then i didn't missed anything of value.

What an absolutely dreadful movie. It is truly awful and creepy. And it made absolutely NO sense whatsoever. My biggest regret is that I watched it until the end. But that's because I kept waiting for the story to develop - only it didn't. There was this one point in the movie where I thought it was going to, but then it just took this super weird turn and basically spun this second, completely unrelated story that also made no sense. Though they were trying to connect the two with the appearance of the "father" in the second part, but that made no sense either and connected absolutely nothing. Do yourself a favor and skip this horrible movie.

Very good film. While some persons are worried or scandalized for the implied sex relations between a man and one android with the features of a little girl in the first part of the movie, what made the stronger impact on me was the unethical ability of human beings to destroy real emotion through the dehumanization of technology and, if I give human value to the android, alas! ...what a terrible "fate" the little robot in this movie has.

On the other hand, we are talking about a construct, which makes it more absurd to talk about any sexual conduct we disapprove. Here we are dealing with a human being and a robot, so I think we should find new words to define the simulacrum of the human something that they do together, which weakens moralistic derision when one realizes that one of the components is a robot.

The first story was annoying to me, because of the character of the father who has not processed that her daughter disappeared ten years ago, but the second part comes to life with the appearance of an old lady who longs for her brother who died 60 years ago. In the end, the film balances its two stories by complementing one with the other. Good script, direction and acting by all.

P. S. Elli reminded me of Edith Scob in «Les yeux sans visage».

Too timid to say what it wants to say. Too artless to be artful. Diffuse and half-formed concepts. It wants to be child pornography, but is afraid to say so. It hides its true feelings by trying to be artsy and conceptual, but gets bogged down between the lie and the truth. It fails as art. It fails as child pornography. It fails as propaganda.

Who is "papa" and why does he have an android daughter? Was there ever a real daughter? And where is "mum"? If he had a real daughter who died and replaced her with this android, why didn't he replace "mum" too? Since he's sexually involved with the child android, are we to assume he was sexually involved with his real daughter if she rever existed? Or is "papa" just some rich pervert who bought a child android? Why can't she remember certain things one moment, but then later remembers them. Are these actual memories, or just "realism" artifacts papa implants in her to enhance the feeling that he's having a loving, sexual relationship with a real daughter? Because we know that's what this movie us trying to sell: The concept that parents can indulge their sexual fantasies with their children in a healthy, loving way.

I think others that have reviewed this movie assume Elli is a replacement daughter for an organic daughter who died. I disagree. Papa is just a broken, single man with an obsession fornaked little girls. In one scene, we see him remove Elli's tongue and vagina in the morning (after a night spent together all night that "mum never would have allowed but doesn't need to know about") and wash them in the kitchen sink.

Why try to hide this message behind artifice and half-hearted artsy-fartsy bulls**t? If you really feel your deviance is nothing to be ashamed of, why then do you seem so ashamed of it? And if you're that ashamed, why air it out in the open? Just go hide in a dark closet with your pedophilia fetish and stop trying to convince us and yourself it's nothing to be ashamed of. You're embarrassing yourself.