Related to PG due to normalization of pedophilia in movies

http://archive.is/Uu8dM#selection-453.17-453.96

BERLIN, February 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A sci-fi movie portraying a sexual relationship between a man and a robot that replicates his lost 10-year-old daughter has prompted walkouts and outrage at its screenings at the Berlin film festival.

The film, titled The Trouble with Being Born and directed by Austrian Sandra Wollner, stirred controversy at its February 25 world premiere at Berlinale 2020, reported the U.K. Independent.

It depicts a child-like android, played by 10-year-old Lena Watson (a pseudonym), who calls her owner “Daddy.”

While much is implied, the movie 'leaves little doubt that the man ... has a sexual relationship with the child robot,' the Independent reports.

The movie also includes multiple CGI nude scenes.

The film evoked disgust on Twitter, with one person calling it “paedophile propaganda,” the Independent reported.

That was echoed by FilmGoblin in a review entitled “Pedophilia gets mainstream nod in The Trouble with Being Born.”

“Who are these people actually kidding?” notes the review.

“Let’s not pretend that this isn’t about mainstreaming the last sexual perversion — other than bestiality — that isn’t socially acceptable,” it adds. “And there’s no argument to be made in defense of the existence of this film by using the ‘Lolita’ defense, or even the ‘well it’s just a robot’ defense.”

Wollner told the Hollywood Reporter, which described the film as a “hidden gem,” that the role was originally intended for a 20-year-old.

However, she decided to cast a child after removing some more explicit elements in the script.

“What I found interesting about it is that we have an android whose only desires are the ones you program it to have,” she said. “I found it fascinating to show the perspective of the world through this machine that does not judge and does not care, and doesn’t need the meanings that we do.”

Wollner added that she was initially “scared” about choosing a child for the part and said that when she was casting for the role, she looked for a minor who came from a “healthy environment.”

It was also necessary that the child come from “the sort of open-minded family who would understand the story they wanted to tell and also allow them to do it,” noted The Hollywood Reporter.

In the end, Wollner found Watson because her parents were known by a friend of a friend.

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review-the-trouble-with-being-born-is-a-chilly-rumination-on-memory/

An android whose deep black eyes and waxily smooth skin—evoking the eerie expressionlessness of Christiane’s face mask in Eyes Without a Face—are the very definition of the Uncanny Valley, Elli was built to replicate the father’s daughter, who disappeared 10 years before.

…"Wollner continues to fill her film with too little story...."

That problem becomes more acute once Elli runs away and the story shifts to another android-human relationship. After Elli is picked up by a passing motorist (Simon Hatzl) who then gifts her like a new toy to his elderly mother (Ingrid Burkhard), still mourning the little brother she lost 60 years before. The ease with which Elli is made into a boy—in the world of the film, reprogramming androids is about as complicated as restarting a smartphone—stands in stark contrast to the violent trauma of abuse that still lingers like a ghost in her flickeringly sentient CPU. But while the setting and the primary human character changes in the second half of the film, Wollner’s narrow view of her story means just more of the same glassy expressions and long maundering silences, like Tarkovsky without the existential pain. At some point, the mirroring begins to feel more like straight repetition without any significant revelation.

In the end, The Trouble with Being Born suffers from the same issue as its moody androids: enervation borne out of repetition. There are some attempts here and there to comment on the replacement of human connection with silicone facsimiles. We almost never see people together.

But rather than truly exploring the ramifications of its futuristic conceit, whether from a broader societal or individualistic and relational perspective, the film just keeps looping back to the same luminously filmed but ultimately blank silences.

Presumably in no small part due Sandra Wollner's error in believing "it fascinating to show the perspective of the world through this machine that does not judge and does not care, and doesn’t need the meanings that we do.”