Companion by Drew Hancock: A Fantastic Black Comedy About Murder and Relationships
"Companion" is a low-budget black comedy directed by newcomer Drew Hancock, based on his own script. At the beginning of the film, three young couples gather for a party in a country house. The picture then changes genre several times and surprises the viewer with plot twists; describing it without spoilers is almost impossible.
The low-budget debut "Companion" by Drew Hancock - this is a name to remember - is shaping up to be a small sensation. It's doing well in worldwide distribution and collecting rave reviews, although, it would seem, it is based on the reproduction of genre conventions. But all because this witty (not to be confused with "funny"), and at times just very smart film is made easily, without puffed cheeks and deep-meaning phrases.
The only significant drawback is that it is almost impossible to tell about "Companion" without spoilers. So, if you want to experience all the surprises yourself, it is better not to know anything about this picture in advance, except for the basic facts: the dialogues are brilliant, the actors are as magnificent as possible in a funny black comedy, and the surprising intrigue more than once carries a philosophical charge.
The main character and narrator of "Companion" is Iris, a pretty but anxious brunette (actress Sophie Thatcher from the recent "Heretic", apparently, has a great future ahead of her). In the first, extremely touching scene of the film, she recalls meeting Josh, her caring boyfriend (Jack Quaid, son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, best known for the series "The Boys"), in a supermarket: he was so fascinated by her beauty that he collapsed a stand with oranges.
Now Iris and Josh are visiting friends who are having a party in a country house - by the lake, in the forest. Iris is nervous, afraid of not being liked by the others, Josh reassures her. The get-together, by the way, is modest, only for six people: in addition to our heroes, the host named Sergei - a lop-eared businessman of a dangerous kind (Briton Rupert Friend drops "Dobroe utro" and "Vypiem za liubov" almost without an accent) - invited his bitchy girlfriend Kat (Megan Suri) and a charming gay couple - Eli and Patrick (Harvey Guillen and Lucas Gage).
Attention. Further - spoilers. If you want to avoid them, return to the text after watching the movie!
The evening passes without incident, albeit with heavy drinking. Iris, not without difficulty, finds a common language with the company. And in the morning, something terrible happens: the hangover idyll is disturbed by a crime, blood is shed. A comedy about relationships instantly turns into a Hitchcockian thriller. However, this is not the last transformation of the film.
"Companion" (in fact, of course, "Companion") combines genres, creating a cocktail of original properties. From the first frames, it is something like a rom-com, exploring the dynamics of power in a couple - we see three such unions on the screen, each of which reveals its fragility in a moment of crisis. But the detective component is also by no means decorative. The murder is a reaction to an attempted rape, and the question of moral responsibility instantly turns into the supporting structure of the film. The heroine, whose demonstrative weakness turns out to be a camouflage, translates "Companion" into the register of increasingly fashionable films about changes in gender roles.
It turns out that Iris is not a person at all, but a companion robot model taken by Josh on lease. Her hair, eyes, voice timbre are the result of manual settings, as are intelligence, temperament, aggression level (although in the basic settings - the inability of a mechanical woman to lie and cause pain or harm to people). Iris herself, alas, does not guess about her nature. The science fiction component is the very spice that makes "Companion" unique. Without removing the designated "too human" problems, it makes them sharper and more insoluble, and the author's mocking look at the spoiled inhabitants of the 21st century, privileged - is more merciless.
An impressive trail of cultural predecessors stretches behind "Companion", which determined the canon of the film about an artificial person. From the very ancient classics - "Metropolis" by Fritz Lang (in the first great film on the stated topic, the robot was also a woman!), from satirical predecessors, one must certainly recall "The Stepford Wives" by Brian Forbes, and then "Blade Runner" by Ridley Scott, "RoboCop" by Paul Verhoeven and especially "Terminator" by James Cameron, directly quoted in the brilliant final scene. From the very recent, "Her" by Spike Jonze and "Ex Machina" by Alex Garland come to mind. But this does not prevent Iris from maintaining her individuality, despite the fact that in the story she is a serial, typical model.
Drew Hancock has nothing special to say on the hot topic of artificial intelligence and its role in a changing world. But he knows: artificial copies created or invented by man are only reflections of our own properties, phobias, desires and hopes. In "Companion", the viewer's empathy inevitably shifts from greedy, short-sighted and cruel people to a robot, even when the latter is driven solely by an embedded instinct (Can machines have instincts? In cinema - they can.) of self-preservation. It turns out that a machine taught by a human is capable of loving stronger than its fickle mentor of flesh and blood. And since the mechanism is built into a woman's body, the film at the same time becomes something like a feminist manifesto - sometimes ironic, but not entirely.
The last season was marked by two outstanding pictures about the emancipation of a woman choosing an independent trajectory in a patriarchal world - these were "Barbie" by Greta Gerwig and "Poor Things" by Yorgos Lanthimos. The more modest in all respects "Companion" will not win an international festival and will not become the highest-grossing film of the year, but it could well have made a trilogy with them.
