Advantageous

Watching this film made for a beautiful and worthwhile evening. I loved the stillness it evoked, as it asked me to consider what is important in my life.

Samantha Kim, (Jules), did a wonderful job of showing all that a young girl can be: kind, humble, and entranced by the delicate joy that life can hold, while also questioning her place and position in a world that only sees what she can give - instead of what she is.

Jacqueline Kim, (Gwen), evokes the challenges facing many women today - when career and family choices have long lasting results - in a performance full of silence. The cinematography that supports the silence means that Kim's message is heard more than if it were shouted.

The cover image is almost a misnomer as it appears to import more value to the science, when this film is most definitely about the human condition. I absolutely recommend taking the time to watch, think and share.

I can't stop thinking how realistic is this view of the future of a trickle down world, hiding behind the cloaks of computerised and anonymous social systems. Well worth watching, a social commentary wrapped up in a scifi blanket. With humanity struggling and failing to define itself.

I ran across Advantageous on Netflix after starting and stopping a couple of big budget movies. I will concede that I am a sucker for sci-fi, but this is more than sci-fi. It is a question about medical science and implications for humanity. It is also a question about the priorities of society and what poorly chosen ones can cost us. I can honestly say a film has not caught my attention and made me think this much in years. The strength of the film is obvious because it did not rely on elaborate special effects and action scenes to have an impact.

As one reviewer described it, the deliberate choice of everything - from color, to music, to lighting was so well thought out, it was truly watching moving artwork.

And yes, I used the word film to describe this work rather than movie. The two have a definite distinction.

I can't figure out why this got such a low rating. Those of us who feel our middle class existence slipping away from us and our children will appreciate the contemporary feel. I would think any man with a wife or daughter in the working world (or any women who have a career or aspire to one) may find the film hitting a bit too close to home.

The story was well-written, the acting reasonably good, and the cityscape both attractive and well-created.

It prompts a discussion of the very nature of self: Who am I, who will I be in the future; if I have my heart surgically replaced, I am still me, no? What about my brain? What about ... everything?

Making a believable science fiction film is hard. Making a believable science fiction film on a low-budget is nearly impossible. Well at least it used to be until director Jennifer Phang came along and proved otherwise in her Sundance festival hit, Advantageous. Phang was able to create a futuristic world with minimum visual effects by altering mundane human perception. There are three important techniques she uses to achieve this effect.

The first is the deceleration of time for background objects while objects in the foreground continue to move at a regular speed. This mixture of various speeds becomes a motif for understanding the futuristic world she presents to the audience.

The second technique is the compression of space achieved by using telephoto and zoom lenses. The human eye perceives depth of field in three dimensions. Objects farther away are small and objects closer to us are big. This is normally replicated with a dolly shot in films where the camera physically tracks forwards or backwards. However, in Advantageous, the zoom lens is used to compress the space in front of us. The camera stays still and we simply get closer to the subject. This causes a flattening of space to the point our eyes are no longer able to perceive the distance between the foreground objects and background objects.

The third technique Phang uses to create a believable science fiction world is silence. Yes I talk about silence a lot, but it does wonders. Our ears are not used to hearing complete and utter silence. In every moment, even at the quietest moments, we are subjected to some level of constant ambient noise. Whether it's coming from the Air Conditioner, the Fridge, the Wind, there's always something preventing us from experiencing complete silence. However, when we do finally get the chance and we see a character on a big screen screaming and crying in complete silence, our ears are hit with a new level of sensory experience. The new sensory experience is foreign to our ears and forces the audience to take the character he or she is watching out of his assumption of the character's world. This means, the audience finally recognizes that the character he or she is watching does not have the same sensory understanding of the world as he or she does.

These three techniques were vital in Phang's ability to successfully create a sophisticated and at the same time genuine science fiction world on a low-budget.