Companion is part of a small subset of gory indie films in the past year or two that have really leaned in to explicitly borrowing themes from kink culture as major elements of their plots: I’m thinking of Cuckoo, which we discussed here, which included mind control, pheromones, and impregnation as elements of its monster’s kit; but also M3GAN which spawned a summer sequel and also an expanded universe, including a sexbot movie, Soulm8te (which Sabina Graves from Gizmodo has very rightly pointed out should be spelled Soulm8); and to a lesser and greater extent movies like Talk To Me and its body-hopper ilk, What’s Inside, etc.
Sophie Thatcher, hot off of A24’s religious mindbender Heretic, is back with Jack Quaid (currently attempting to double up with his potentially one-note Novocaine this weekend) to play a 50s house wife in 2020 something. In that way, it feels like a more tongue-in-cheek spin on Olivia Wilde’s messy Don’t Worry Darling. Thatcher’s sex robot performance is filled with all sorts of non-Duchennes smiles and brittle microemotions that flit across her trembling face before she has a chance to even recognize it on herself. She’s able to uncanny valley her way through the entire film without it ever getting old.
Thatcher’s Iris has lots of trappings of kink lit: sex robots, ahegao prominently displayed in the movie posters and advertising, mindwipes, all as ways into freeuse and consensual nonconsent tropes from the wellspring of Companion’s literary DNA. What’s kind of amazing are all the types of tropes that Companion avoids in its depiction of Iris and the other sex bots in the movie that seem like they could’ve made the movie more prurient, titillating, and fan service-y: things like group sex, body modification, and really just any sex at all.
One of the excellent elements of this movie is that all sex is depicted with the same warmth and eroticism of a bag of shrimp that’s been left out on a warm porch for too long. Iris is not depicted in really any sensual scenes though there are two or three different scenes which seem like they’re intended by the male participant to be romantic or at least seductive in nature. Quaid’s beta brand of masculinity kind of makes all of this exploitation feel twee and safe in a way that doesn’t quite work with Don’t Worry Darling’s Jack as played by Harry Styles, whose relationship with director Wilde sort of overshadowed the press for the movie itself during a very public break with partner Jason Sudeikis.
And just while we’re reflecting on the ways that Companion is able to break out of some of the genre tropes that weigh down other films of its ilk, the movie finds a way to talk about AI and the coming singularity without making a stroll down some tired lanes or swerving down new and weird paths as dictated by the IP of that franchise.
Bestie and I came out of this movie ready to see it again right away, which I think means it was either amazing or we just had a lot of head canon for things they could do in the sequel series that is inevitably going to come out.
