The Artifice Girl
Franklin Ritch's feature debut proves to be a thoughtful lo-fi sci-fi exercise.
Film Yap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I didn’t know much about “The Artifice Girl” (available in select theaters and on VOD beginning Thursday, April 27) coming into this review other than it won Best International Feature at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival and featured Lance Henriksen (of whom I’m a big fan) in a supporting role.
We open as computer programmer Gareth (writer/producer/editor/director Franklin Ritch) is being held in an interrogation room. He’s being questioned by shadowy law enforcement agents Deena (Sinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard). They’re insinuating that Gareth is a child pornographer and sexual predator and have photographs featuring a young girl named Cherry (Tatum Matthews) as evidence.
Turns out their hunch couldn’t be further from the truth. Gareth, himself a victim of childhood sexual abuse, created and puppets Cherry as an artificial intelligence designed to ensnare pedophiles. He joins forces with Deena and Amos to further develop Cherry and detain more deviants. (Eat your heart out, Chris Hansen!)
“The Artifice Girl” calls to mind Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina,” but it clings less to genre trappings and isn’t as sensationalistic. It’s a heady, stagy exercise that’s broken into three acts and/or chapters. The second act flashes forward 15 years. The third goes even further with Henriksen portraying an aged Gareth.
“The Artifice Girl” is lo-fi sci-fi stripped of spectacle, but flush with moral quandaries. Ethical clashes emerge over the years as Cherry evolves. We’re made to not only question Cherry’s humanity, but the humanities of her handlers as well.
Ritch’s thoughtful writing and the nuanced performances from Matthews, Nichols, Girard, Henriksen and Ritch help sell these ideas and this world itself. I’d like to write more about the movie, but it’s a simple story (in presentation, not ideation) told simply over 93 minutes best discovered by the viewer themself. Ritch is an exciting, new cinematic voice to whom I’ll be paying attention in the years to come. He’s made one helluva feature debut.