In awe

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2017)

A marvelous, multidimensional film that, through expert toying of light and darkness, subtle visual cues and superb acting, slowly peels its layers to reveal different outlooks of the same, immovable focal point – freedom.
The movie is equally about postmodern intellectual brilliance as it is about primordial love; about the importance of safeguarding boundaries as much as the human drive to question them, push and, utterly, shatter them to pieces.
I saw myself in Caleb's virginal naivety, in Nathan's stylized instability, in Kyoko's muted despair and, the triumph of the movie, Ava's basal want.
Manufactured or not, when the human can come to identify with the artificial, that can only be classed as grandiose cinematic success.