Occasionally, the critic encounters a film that resists all analysis: one that remains trapped inside its own universe, communicating only in gibbering twitches of incoherence. Here’s one such: a light-headed melodrama, charting the pallid couplings of a brilliant research scientist (Michael Pitt, somewhat underqualified) with – male-fantasy klaxon – a French model whose eyes apparently offer proof of intelligent design (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey). Every Gravely Emphasised Line of Dialogue suggests writer-director Mike Cahill is reaching for profundity, but his narrative methods – roughly 95% happenstance – are unscientific, the emotions generated entirely sophomoric. One laugh, courtesy of Pitt’s intellect-signifying dicky bow; the rest is arrant, po-faced nonsense.
I Origins review – a light-headed sci-fi melodrama
An underqualified Michael Pitt plays a brilliant research scientist in this emotionally sophomoric drama, writes Mike McCahill