Could your other half love your clone?
THERE is an old, probably apocryphal story about a man on a train who is startled when the woman opposite, a perfect stranger, picks up his chocolate bar and starts eating it.
Glaring at her, he snatches it back and eats the rest of it, her cue to glare at him. And of course later, after she has got off (and to his intense embarrassment), he finds his own chocolate in his pocket.
That’s just how Swan Song (★★★II, 15, 112 mins) begins, only without the glaring, as the first encounter between Cameron (Mahershala Ali) and his wife Poppy (Naomie Harris). It’s an unpromisingly hackneyed start, but after that the film, set in a near future of driverless cars and household robots, contains plenty of originality.
Ali, always such a watchable actor, skilfully makes the most of two roles, with Cameron having decided to clone himself rather than burden Poppy, already dealing with her twin brother’s death, with the terrible news that he is terminally ill.
A biotech company led by Glenn Close’s faintly sinister doctor has pioneered technology in which dying people can leave exact replicas of themselves without their loved ones realising. But the technology is still very young. And once he meets his clone, Cameron begins to have second thoughts.
It’s a flawed film in several ways, although actually its opening has a kind of later resonance, with ethical questions about ownership looming large.
On the whole, it’s a promising debut by first-time Irish director Benjamin Cleary, worthy of its illustrious cast.
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