Film - Clone

A look through his archive reviews finds Steve Taylor-Bryant remembering Matt Smith's Clone...

Clone, starring Matt Smith (Doctor Who) and Eva Green (Quantum of solace, Merlin), is written and directed by Hungarian Benedek Fliegauf. Originally titled Womb on its 2010 cinema release, it is a tale of a woman’s all consuming love for her deceased partner and the trials and tribulations of a life long decision she makes to give birth and raise a clone of him from childhood through to manhood and the inevitable consequences that brings. The cloning story is given a twist from the normal Sci-Fi attempts of this subject and the story is filled with emotion and heartache. A human take on the tale if you will. There is an awful lot of silence in the film and camera panning scenery shots, and at some points it would be easy to give up on the movie but please don’t.

Eva Green portrays Rebecca with more constraint than she would usually use in her films and it works very well especially in the times when the dialogue is small or non existent. Matt Smith is superb as Thomas and avoids sounding like his Doctor Who character, which is no mean feat and has happened regularly to others who have left the TARDIS for edgier film roles. At the beginning of the film I must give a mention to the various children that play the younger Rebecca and Thomas, child acting has moved on leaps and bounds in the last few years and these children if they carry on like this will have successful careers ahead of them.

Not a film for everyone, and I’m not sure it will be a commercial success, but if you like to watch something with compassion and that will spark debate amongst yourself and your close friends then give it a go.

Image - IMDb.