Review of: "Womb" (2010)
Womb (2010) (Russia)
Written/Directed By: Benedek Fliegauf (Hungarian)
Stars: Eva Green, Matt Smith, Lesley Manville
IMDB Rating: 6.3/10 Stars
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 45%
Plot Synapsis: After her lover (Matt Smith) dies prematurely, a woman (Eva Green) makes the controversial decision to bring him back to life by giving birth to his clone. From his infancy to manhood, she faces the unavoidable complexities of her controversial decision.
My Review: This nearly 2-hour movie would have made a better 65-minute Black Mirror episode than a full-length foreign art film about the perversion of technology from grief. I don’t know... I can see how some might like it as an "art film." Me... Not so much... I have never been a fan of foreign filmmakers trying to have political commentaries about society touching on a possible POV of the everyday American POV.
Not saying this movie was made for Americans, it clearly isn't but it feels like they tried to cater to American movie lovers and with that, failed miserably. That is why I said Black Mirror here. If they just would have stayed with the mental health aspects, the perversion of technology and more horror/thriller-based themes the movie might have been better than it actually was.
Right now to me; it just comes off as pretentious and morally/sexually weird border lining on downright sick. Some on MovieChat.org were very arrogant about wanting the film banned and whatnot. That isn't the dumbest thing I read on there in relation to the film lol. Some people were/are just straight nasty and added nothing but name calling at each other. Probably why I hardly ever go on there anymore.
That site was, may still be, the best alternate to the IMDB.com message boards that they removed some years back due to “toxic fandom.” I hate these buzzwords people and the media will create to describe something insanely toxic online.
But It's Whatever.
It's a 10-11-year-old film now and they tend to talk about perverting techology with cloning all the time in films/shows now. If it would have been more Black Mirror style this might have had a shot at being decent.
This whole thing was executed wrong and sloppy… That is why it sort of doesn't make much sense on the narrative. Spoilers ahead… What I took away from the film was she is a virgin this whole time. She longed for her long-lost love. They finally meet up as adults. A day or 2 later he is killed in a car accident. At that point, she has emotionally checked out. She immediately goes back into the jeep not being able to properly process the accident and his passing.
Since this is "sci/fi" they introduce cloning as an option with almost no real explanation as to why/how this is a thing in this low-tech narrative story line. It is just part of the reality here, but they make no real introduction that this is a future human society. We could have used some visual clues that this is a technologically evolved society. Maybe like the teddy bear from A.I. Something "advanced" to show us humans are very capable with technolgy, but lack normal basic human skills like grieving a lover.
This movie really needed a Black Mirror and/or American Horror take to it and maybe a cohesive script... Now it just looks like a very misunderstood, artsy, weird sexual tension film. There are few themes in the film that they could have dug more into, but chose not to and the film suffers because of it. The performances are fine. The cast was really good for a really badly written script and just about all the lovey/dovey child scenes are very awkward and to most American audiences this wouldn’t make much sense to us. To non-Americans, maybe it is better understood but I don’t know. Most of the comments I saw about the film are about a decade old now and most had nothing but negative things to say about the film.
The rest of the comments looked like your everyday Twitter Troll looking to stir the pot. The only reason I watched this is because I wanted to see more of Eva Green because I just think she is fantastic in everything, even if said film is really bad, like this one. Just a little mini-review here. I’d say enjoy Womb but there wasn’t much here to enjoy. It is a cluster of nonsense that also borderlines on the weird sexual dynamic at play here. Very hard to enjoy that, but if you are into dystopian style stories with decent performances then someone, somewhere may actually like this movie.