Thursday 25 September 2014

"I Origins" (The Guardian 26/09/14)


I Origins *
Dir: Mike Cahill. With: Michael Pitt, Steven Yeun, Astrid Berges-Frisbey. 106 mins. Cert: 15

Occasionally, the critic encounters a film that resists all analysis: one that remains trapped inside its own autistic universe, communicating only in gibbering twitches of incoherence. Here’s one such: a light-headed melodrama, charting the pallid couplings of a brilliant research scientist (Michael Pitt, somewhat underqualified) with – male fantasy klaxon – a French model whose eyes apparently offer proofs of intelligent design (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey). Every Gravely Emphasised Line of Dialogue suggests writer-director Mike Cahill is reaching for profundity, but his narrative methods – roughly 95% happenstance – are unscientific, the emotions generated entirely sophomoric. One laugh, courtesy of Pitt’s intellect-signifying dicky bow; the rest is arrant po-faced nonsense. 

I Origins opens in selected cinemas from today.

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