Our review of After Yang, from Kogonada: Robot to be True

The future awaits us.

He is close.

Things haven't changed that much.

The cars no longer have a driver.

The houses are modern, spacious, with large bay windows that slide.

The time and place are not specified.

This slight anticipation produces a sweet feeling of strangeness.

There is something Japanese in these hushed atmospheres, these interiors where people always seem to be whispering.

Jake (Colin Farrell, free, detached, with a Howard Hughes mustache) and Kyra have adopted a Chinese girl.

So that she is not too out of place, they offered her an android who knows a lot of details about China.

Mika considers Yang as his brother (gossips will say Big Brother).

He quotes Lao-tseu, collects butterflies, explains to him what a family tree is, takes a family photo.

The mechanical butler is discreet, serene, almost too perfect.

Abysses of reflection

Jake owns a tea shop that seems to be in decline.

Kyra plans an important conference for the group that employs her.

Their schedule is disrupted.

They meet, avoid each other, lose sight of each other.

Who will accompany Mika to school?

Yang fills in the gaps, gives the teenager the affection that her parents neglect to give her.

It's a practice, these techno-sapiens who serve as babysitters.

There will be a problem.

The machine breaks down.

Yang breaks down.

Big trouble: Jake had bought it used.

is the diagnosis.

How to fix it?

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The original company will not deal with it.

Call an unlicensed technician.

A museum curator is also interested in the ramshackle, brain-dead robot.

Jake accesses Yang's memory.

His memories are like a shower of stars.

Images pop up, especially those of a blonde waitress.

It's like mourning in slow motion.

What if Yang was human, all too human?

He will not miss more than that.

Was he happy?

Did he have any regrets?

The height would be that he had known love.

The air of nothing, the film plunges into abysses of reflection.

A layer of mystery

All this in a world that evokes

or

.

Kogonada works on the form, refines the frame, takes care of the decorations.

This is high precision.

A layer of mystery envelops this fluffy, subtle, delicate tale, taken from a collection by Alexander Weinstein.

Beauty has her napkin ring here.

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The emotion is not far from that felt during the agony of HAL, the computer of

, which does not exclude crazy episodes, like this sequence where the four characters dance together on a syncopated rhythm.

There may be no after and that's not so bad.

That's the moral of the story.

At least robots have a soul.

The news was worth noting.

"After Yang", science fiction by Kogonada, with Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith.

Duration 1h36.