THE STORY – In order to find new inspiration for her next novel, writer Clarissa participates in a prestigious artist residency program. Through this artist grant, she meets the state-of-the-art virtual assistant Dalloway. This AI-powered app is supposed to help her write during her stay and now serves as her companion. But in reality, Clarissa feels that Dalloway is increasingly trying to become a part of her life. She soon suspects that she is being monitored. Her suspicions are further reinforced by another participant in the program, a whistleblower, who warns her about the AI app. Clarissa then begins to investigate on her own to discover the true intentions of her hosts.
THE CAST – Cecile de France, Anna Mouglalis, Lars Mikkelsen, Mylene Farmer
THE TEAM – Yann Gozlan (Director/Writer), Nicolas Bouvet-Levrard & Thomas Kruithof (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
Writer’s Block. It is something that stalks authors, writers, and even film critics. It is a shadowy figure, always lurking in the background, waiting for its moment to strike, to take hold and cause the infected host to question everything about themselves and their talent. It is a paranoid fear that is especially relevant for critics reporting on a film festival like Cannes. Surrounded by so many films to watch, rate, and review. All within what seems like an ever-dwindling deadline. The pressure to write something not only coherent but engaging and does justice to a film. All before filing it and moving to the next one. And yet you sit down at your laptop, and the blank page and cursor menacingly stare back at you. Writer’s block has been, somewhat ironically, the genesis of fantastic pieces of cinema, “Barton Fink” and “Adaptation,” for example. It is unlikely that “Dalloway” (or “The Residence” in North America) will be mentioned in the same breath as those classics.
Clarissa, played by Cecile de France (“Switchblade Romance”), has not written a book in six years after achieving success as a writer for young teens. In an attempt to reinvent herself, she is trying to write a novel from the perspective of Virginia Woolf in the days leading to her suicide. To break down those mental barriers, she has checked into a Parisian artistic foundation that provides the time and space to create. It is fully funded…if she turns in the appropriate word counts on schedule. An Alexa-style program fully automates the smart apartment, not only controlling lights, temperature, music playlists, etc., but also acting as a virtual assistant, planner, and proofreader.
Artificial intelligence as the antagonist is a common theme, not only for Hollywood in general but also for films from all over the world; we just saw Ethan Hunt and his team battle the mysterious program called The Entity in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.” The eponymous Dalloway, personally tailored to its subject Clarissa by being named after a Virginia Woolf novel, bears an eerie visual similarity to The Entity in its evolving blue mass on the video screens in the apartment. Alarm bells will ring for film fans when they see the residence in which Clarissa is staying, which is called The Ludovico Foundation. Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” used the term “The Ludovico Technique” as the moniker for the painful, eye-opening aversion therapy that the main character, Alex, is forced to endure. It starts innocently enough. A casual “Are you okay?” here and “How are you feeling?” there. As time passes, Dalloway insidiously crawls inside Clarissa’s mind and past, learning more and more about her. It is revealed that Clarissa’s son committed suicide, just as Woolf had. At the AI’s behest, Clarissa begins to write about her son, and the floodgates open. She spends days straight pouring her heart and soul into her work… all under the watchful eye of Dalloway. At the same time, a fellow guest, played by Lars Mikkelsen, plants the idea that not everything is what it seems at this idealistic commune. Soon enough, an emotionally raw Clarissa recedes into a life of suspicion and paranoia, amplified by the grief and guilt that she feels inside.
De France is utterly convincing as a woman spiraling out of control. Her role in “Switchblade Romance” similarly had her questioning her reality, and she takes the audience with her as she tumbles down the AI rabbit hole. While the production design and cinematography do a great job of building this near-future world, the screenplay is where the film falls short. Despite being based on a 2020 novel by Tatiana de Rosnay called “Flowers of Darkness,” you would be forgiven for thinking that it is all sounding rather “Black Mirror”-esque, as it is, unfortunately, a shadow from which the film cannot, escape. Now in its seventh season, Charlie Brooker’s seminal series has gone down this road many times before. Often in more engaging and scathing ways, certainly with a more concise runtime.
The film’s dreaded and misguided central premise is that art would be better without the artist. It envisions the creation of art and media for the general public without the problem of having to work with those temperamental, stubborn, difficult, maverick people who do the difficult, often impossible part: the act of creation. It is a theme that permeates through the film industry. Just look at the various strikes by writers and actors in the last couple of years. They are fighting for their jobs and livelihoods, for protection from artificial intelligence. It is a shame that this argument against AI taking full creative control seems to have been fed through ChatGPT for this disappointment of a movie.
