MOVIE
$9 Plus Popcorn
Frankenstein, with all-female parts
If you forced Mary Shelley, Timothy Leary, Camille Paglia, and John Waters to collaborate on a film, you'd still fail to duplicate the witty and timely madness of Teknolust. The digital movie, directed by Bay Area filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson, premiered at the Sundance festival in January and will travel to screens across the country throughout the year.
At Teknolust's core is a modern retelling of Frankenstein. Hershman Leeson infuses her revisionist tale with a compelling gender twist and a playful sense of humor. Her scientist is the aptly named Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton), a gifted biogeneticist who plays God with her top-secret computer code. Rather than a hideous and numb-minded monster, Rosetta programs three smart and beautiful "self-replicating automatons" named Ruby, Marinne, and Olive (all also played by Swinton). The only flaw: The SRAs need sperm to survive. As a solution, Rosetta sends Ruby into the world every night to collect "donations" from men at local bars. Ruby runs into trouble when Federal Immune Patrol agent Edward Hopper (James Urbaniak) begins investigating a viral epidemic affecting the men who have had sex with her. When Rosetta is enlisted to aid in the police hunt, she must reconcile her growing attraction to Hopper with her desire to protect her digital daughter.
Through the concurrent adventures of Ruby and Rosetta, Hershman Leeson explores postfeminist sexual reproduction, cloning, and Leary's vision of computer empowerment. So, while the film may not sound like your father's monster movie, it is thematically in sync with Shelley's observations from 1818. Fortunately, Waters-inspired mischief - such as Ruby trying to buy doughnuts with a handful of condoms, and the mysterious migrating Band-Aid on Agent Hopper's face - means the film doesn't take itself too seriously.
On the frontend, the feature was shot with Sony's CineAlta 24p digital camera, which delivers a picture comparable to traditional 35 mm as it runs at the native film rate of 24 progressive frames per second. The result is an astonishingly crisp picture, despite cameraman Hiro Narita's rejection of pure realism. Hershman Leeson's use of meticulous computer animation and innovative set design, including the virtual variety, add to the rich and novel production values.
Check for festival dates at www.teknolustthemovie.com.
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