“Electric Child” in cinemas: When an AI is supposed to save your own child

Childbirth often follows a schematic pattern in films. Not so in "Electric Child." Instead of hearing the midwives' usual "push, push," we find ourselves underwater. The sounds are muffled, reminiscent of humpback whale songs, and only later do we hear human cries, and a head becomes visible. The newborn looks directly at the viewer—questioning, inquisitive.

Shortly after the successful water birth, the film by Swiss director Simon Jaquemet ("Chrieg") dives back into the cool water. A child drifts in the waves of an ocean, gasping for breath as it reaches a sandy beach. Minutes later, it becomes clear that there hasn't been a time jump here, but rather two births narrated in parallel.

In "Electric Child," experiences from reality and from a constructed digital world are inextricably linked, like an umbilical cord. The connecting element is Sonny (Elliott Crosset Hove), a brilliant programmer who has just witnessed these "births": the birth of Tovu, his child with the Japanese artist Akiko (Rila Fukushima), and the "birth" of an artificial superintelligence, which the film does not depict as a 3D animation, but rather embodies with an actress (Sandra Guldberg Kampp).

In challenging parallel montages, the ambitious thriller-drama jumps from world to world. It contrasts an AI in first-person shooter mode, defying Darwin's laws, with a young couple struggling to adjust to everyday life with a child. On the third narrative level, Sonny's cold working world, with its gigantic data storage systems, acts as a portal between the opposing poles.

But Sonny's professional and personal happiness is shattered when his child, Tovu, is diagnosed with a fatal genetic defect. The father, stricken by the terrible news, embarks on a search for radical solutions that prioritize his own well-being and that of his child over the good of the community. "Electric Child" consistently shows how an increasingly driven, death-denying man pushes aside ethical questions in order to perhaps find a cure for his baby by dangerously influencing his AI.

Simon Jaquemet clearly doesn't want to exploit the bogeyman image of AI, recently present even in US blockbusters like "Mission: Impossible." His film is intended to demonstrate where unchecked and uncontrolled development could lead—and, with reference to the writer Stanislav Lem ("Solaris"), to explore the thesis that artificially created beings can also have feelings.

“Electric Child” , directed by Simon Jaquemet, with Elliott Crosset Hove, Rila Fukushima, Sandra Guldberg Kampp, 118 minutes, FSK 16, in cinemas from August 21st.