Advantageous - 2015

 This was weird. And the ending credits caught me by surprise, it didn’t seem finished at all… although after a bit I made peace with the surprise because yeah, it was over alright. What follows is normal everyday life, them trying to move on…

What I didn’t get was the emphasis they put on the ‘truth’ of the procedure… well, let’s start from the beginning.

Basically it’s a futuristic world, a city with huge skyscrapers, but also a lot of desperate women. Gwen does marketing for a company, but gets fired now because too old. Gwen has a daughter, Jules, and is desperate to get her a good chance in a world that doesn’t have jobs for women, especially after a certain age. So desperate she calls her mom for help but she refuses to ask her father, her mom asks him anyway, and he says no. So desperate, that after 13 years of distance she goes to her cousin Lily’s restaurant. She once slept with Han, Lily’s husband, and that’s why she stayed away all this time, but now she asks for help. Of course it’s such a bomb they need to think about it for a little while.

With no long-term prospects, needing money not only to live and eat but also for Jules’ education, she approaches her old company offering herself as human test. The last project she was working on: instead of invasive plastic surgery, the idea is to transfer her brain into another, younger body. With electrodes and stuff, not by opening the head as in Nightmare before Christmas. 

It’s never been done on a person, and Dave who cares for her tells her the truth, in a place where they can’t be overheard. The reality of this procedure is that it is not transferred, it is copied into another, empty brain, and once that’s done, the young brain will recover from the shock, the older brain won’t. Gwen will die, Gwen 2.0 will be just a copy. 

Still, she feels she has no choice since she can’t find a job. She warns Jules and does it. Gwen 2.0 has a lot of pain, as they said, and has to inject herself with medicine every day. She resumes her marketing job and secures a school for Jules, but she is not the Gwen she once was, and Jules can feel that. 

Gwen 2.0 doesn’t remember talking to Dave and doesn’t know about Gwen’s death until Dave explains it to her; this because Gwen 2.0 was about to distance herself from Jules, feeling like  Jules hated her, and Dave didn’t want it to be all in vain.

What Gwen did, all for Jules.

Jules guesses about Gwen’s deatah by herself, and they talk, and Gwen 2.0 also explains it to Lily and Han, who want to help. Lily cries for her cousin, but then decide they’ll be a part of their lilfe from now on. And that’s how it ends, with Lily, Han and their whole family - they have three boys - meeting Jules and Gwen 2.0 in a park. Gwen 2.0 goes on living because it’s what she can do, what she has to do, this is her life now. Jules lives with her because she’s the closest thing to her dear mother, a copy of her but it’s all that’s left, and it was Gwen’s choice, so Gwen 2.0 has no fault.

There’s talk of attacks from people protesting against this ‘progress’, we see like bombs in the distance, but it never gets more than that.

This life is making women sterile, and it’s also moving towards leaving all women at home, not working. 

The movie moves very slowly, because it’s not about actions, it’s about the women Jules hears crying, both the one in the apartment upstairs and the one downstairs, and eventually the one in her own home.

I want to note that Dave asked Gwen not to do it, that’s why he explained the truth to her, but she saw no other choice.

I liked the fact that Lily never hated Gwen. Gwen thought she would, because she slept with her husband, but Lily replies that he slept with her, meaning she’s not the only one to blame, not the only one at fault, and even if neither Lily or Han knew about the daughter, Lily knew about the two of them, and if her love could forgive Han, it could also forgive Gwen. I loved this bit because too often women are set against one another, but when there is an affair, it always involves two people, not just one.

Well, I understand that a copy is not the same as a transfer, because it’s like she’s not ‘all there’, a copy can miss something, but the fact that Gwen would die, that was pretty obvious, no revelation at all, of course she would if they put her brain elsewhere, that was obvious. Still, a copy not a tranfer, so what doesn’t get copied well is lost. 

I’d say Gwen’s daetah is more surprising because of the copy detail. A transfer would leave the first body with nothing, but a copy… why exactly does Gwen die? What is that her brain can’t cope with, since it’s all still there? Well, not really important. It’d be more important to know where does the young body come from. But I don’t know if they ever answer this…

Jacqueline Kim is Gwen Koh

Freya Adams is Gwen 2.0

Ken Yeong is Han

Jennifer Ehle is Isa Cryer

Jennifer Ikeda is Lily

James Urbaniak is Fisher