Rachael is a grown up now.

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2016)

Sci-fi is a fertile land for narrative experimentation. Where normally a viewer tries to relate to a certain world that he reads as "real", in sci-fi driven stories, the extra-level of abstraction (it's a fiction and reads as such) makes the viewer focus on the abstractions of the narrative layers.
That is, of course, if those layers are well set up, and that demands a good writer, and a good director.
Apparently we have both in Alex Garland. I had never paid special attention to his previous work (as a writer) but i will look it up, and check again. Here he gives an interesting essay on narrative, and the relation between viewer and screen. He draws on what has been done before in sci-fi, but he throws in an interesting package.
He builds the story as a set of relations between 3 characters (plus Kyoko) who observe each other and ultimately try to control and bend the narrative. Behind the fourth wall we observe them all and everything, or so we think.
You can thus look at this one as a variation on 2001, with 3 players each trying to control and bend the course of the narrative.
Or you can look at it as a variation on Dick's electric sheep. In that case Nathan plays Tyrell, Caleb is Deckard and Ava is, of course, Rachael. Nathan is the God who ultimately looses control of his creation, Caleb tests the creation in order to find its flaws, and Ava is the creation, around whom the plot develops.
If you look at it from the 2001 point of view, you'll be, i think, disappointed. There is no Monolith at the beginning to lead you through the game, and the ending is certainly many galaxies away from the ambiguity that Kubrick left us to deal with until today.
**spoilers here**
But if you check it with the Blade Runner glasses, than things become interesting. He twists the character from Caleb, not by making him a replicant, but by revealing his character as a pawn manipulated by Nathan. He rebels against this domination, and makes a move, joining forces with the apparently underwhelmed Ava. In a somehow predictable twist she outplays him, aided by Kyoko, the other "replicant". So the plot revolves around the 2 human characters, who are the whole time both overplayed by the artificially intelligent one.
I was a bit disappointed with the ending. It's clumsy and not powerful when compared to the rest. If it had worked, this would have another effect. But i did enjoy the cinematic frame that Garland used: architecture. The house, ostensibly defined as an isolated world, technology in the middle of nature, cut out from the whole world, So we know there are no external interference in the game our characters play. The building is interesting, as it is its framing. It's not groundbreaking, nor is it deep as what you find in Welles or Kalatozov. If it were, oh this might have been something else...
Sonoya Mizuno has an incredible presence. Her face is amazing, and i wish they could have used her character as something more than a tool for Ava to use in her escape plan.