The Trouble with Being Born

Provocative but wholly unoriginal, exceptionally dull, dreary, disinteresting, and nonsensical - the effects of replicating people and the reasons for doing it are captured in far more elegant evaluations through the films of others.

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.

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.

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.

I really can't understand why directors shoot films with literally no lighting. If they want me to "appreciate" what they are doing then I have to see the thing in the first place. At the beginning, I gave it the benefit of the doubt as I assumed it was some kind of "pre-birth" scene from the child's perspective but that wasn't it at all and - be warned - this happens again and again throughout the film.

As for the content itself, previously I had the Kubrick/Spielberg "AI" film down as *the* most boring film I had ever seen about child robots - but this one has it beaten hands down. At one level this presents a couple of plausible scenarios as to what grieving / damaged people might do with this kind of technology once/if it becomes available and maybe I could have worked harder to look for some kind of deep and meaningful conclusions if they are indeed there, but it didn't earn that, I felt.

Not recommended.