![]() ![]() Consider Jude Law as the gigolo in “A.I.” (2001), Lance Henriksen as the wryly heroic Bishop in “Aliens” (1986)-“I may be synthetic, but I’m not stupid”-and, most Tom-like of all, John Malkovich as the blond cyber-boyfriend in “Making Mr. Well-meaning or dutiful androids have crossed our screens before. We are hardly in unfamiliar territory here. ![]() ![]() Could the forging of feelings, as it were, summon a ghost in the machine? “I’ll act like a person who wants things,” he declares. Strictly speaking, he has no desires of his own, but he is undeterred. He quotes Rilke he makes Alma a luscious breakfast that she doesn’t want and he runs her a foaming bath, lit by candles and strewn with rose petals, on the basis that “ninety-three percent of German women dream of this.” Alma, who belongs firmly to the other seven per cent, is unmoved, though there’s a touching coda, in which Tom lies and soaks in the bath, alone, as if assessing the concept of sensory delight. Tom is on a mission, explaining to Alma that “my algorithm has been designed to make you happy.” Great. ![]() I am.” At which point any secret Cartesians in the cinema will faint with unbearable delight and have to be revived with a splash of Mountain Dew. Only once does Tom suffer a moment of malfunction, when his head jerks repeatedly to one side and he gets stuck on the words “I am. The special effects, therefore, are spectacularly few-a handful of holograms, near the start. It’s up to us to accept that androids exist the issue is not how they were created but how they can be programmed to serve our needs and what such service, for good or ill, might do to us. Instead, Schrader invites us to take certain matters on trust. This is not a movie that labors to join the dots on our behalf. On the basis of such evidence, important decisions will be made: “whether these things will be allowed to marry, to work, to get passports, human rights, or partial human rights,” as Roger says to Alma. She must meet a designated android, take him to her apartment, live with him for three weeks, and submit her findings. This has nothing to do with her studies and everything to do with her being single and childless. Meanwhile, Alma has been asked by her superior, Roger (Falilou Seck), who sits on an ethics committee, to advise on a separate venture. Among its resident experts is Alma (Maren Eggert), a specialist in Sumerian cuneiform, who is close to completing a three-year project it’s telling that the first crack in her demeanor-usually cool and composed-is caused not by any private malaise but by the pulverizing news that another researcher, in the same field, has beaten her to the punch. Nowhere is sprucer than the Pergamon Museum, the stately collection of antiquities and archeological treasures. The streets are so uncrowded as to make us wonder if, and how, the population has been thinned out, though we hear not a whisper of catastrophe. Yet here we are, in and around Berlin, mostly in blessed sunshine. It looks just like the present day, only cleaner-a good joke in itself, given that, as moviegoers, we have had it drummed into us that the world to come will be dystopically horrible. No date is given, but the setting appears to be the near future. Tom is played by Dan Stevens in “I’m Your Man,” a new German comedy from the director Maria Schrader. If you want to be picky, or downright rude, you could point out that he’s a robot, but hey: nobody’s perfect. And did I mention that he knows a lot? As in, everything? To sum up, Tom is quite a guy. He won’t bug you or bore you, and so exactly will he meet your needs, whatever they are, that it’s as if he understood, in advance, what they were going to be. Tom is handsome and sleek, with a discreet dress sense and all the social graces, but what really counts is that he’s kind. ![]()
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