The Me Too Movement has taken to task trespassers in a mainly male toxic environment.
In the future will we be dealing with a Me Two society? And if so, can a techno-sapien find true happiness with a clone?
These are some of the questions posed in the beautifully meditative film, AFTER YANG, a speculative fiction disguised as a family drama.
Jake, a white man and Kyra, a black woman have adopted an Asian daughter, Mika. Woke to the max about cultivating cultural ties, the parents have supplied their daughter with an Asian robot companion, Yang, who is programmed to espouse Asian culture and history.
When Yang malfunctions, Jake goes to extraordinary lengths to restore him, his quest leading him down myriad paths to meetings with a myriad of characters.
Replicant retailers are redundant, manufacturers have moved on, repairers are reluctant and a museum curator seems the only source of salvation.
Then there’s the mysterious Ada, bleached-blonde and Kohl-eyed. First seen sneaking around Jake’s empty house when the family is out, Ada also appears in some of Yang’s stored memories, a cipher. She has a connection to Yang that’s best left for audiences to discover.
Set in a world born of aesthetic sensibility and sound design, a post pandemic planet that bears the scars of upheaval, AFTER YANG seeps in rather than clobbers the audience with special effects or dynamic dramatics.
Musically, AFTER YANG features a theme composed by Oscar-winning legend Ryuichi Sakamoto with the rest of the score composed by Aska Matsumiya, which references “Glide,” from Japan’s 2001 cult film All About Lily Chou-Chou.
Based on a short story by Alexander Weinstein, writer director Kogonada has made a moody, meditative movie about domestic disruption, how the mundane can be hit by the seismic in the blink of an eye.
“At the moment, our whole world is experiencing the trauma of a global crisis. It’s in that context that we ask: Where do we find meaning? The loss of life, and the way we’ve responded to it, sometimes very poorly, can be overwhelming. But I hope my film has a relationship to the now, whether it’s the pandemic or just life itself.”