"After Yang" low-key but reflective and soulful sci-fi

After Yang (2022)

Take “Bicentennial Man” and filter it through director Kogonada’s visually and aurally poetic sensibilities, and you get sci-fi domestic drama “After Yang.” Perhaps that’s oversimplifying his second feature film after 2017’s gentle, exquisitely composed “Columbus,” but Kogonada ventures into the realm of science fiction, and yet it never feels too otherworldly or detached from humanity. Not since Spike Jonze’s tender “Her” has a film found humanity in the most unexpected places, and “After Yang” not only finds it in artificial intelligence but, of all things, tea.

It’s an advanced, not-too-far-off future, and tea shop owner Jake (Colin Farrell) and his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) have given their adopted Chinese daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) an older sibling. Through a company called Brothers & Sisters, Mika is provided with a “technosapien”—yes, an android—named Yang (Justin H. Min) for a more cultural foundation. The family couldn’t be more content aside from working gender roles giving Jake and Kyra a little friction, until Yang malfunctions. Jake seeks out getting Yang repaired before his organic body decomposes and eventually meets a museum curator (Sarita Choudhury) who offers to study Yang’s memory bank to preserve his existence. As Jake learns after seeing a young woman (Haley Lu Richardson) in Yang’s memories, there was a whole life before Jake and his family.

Based on the short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang” from the book “Children of the New World” by Alexander Weinstein, the film is less concerned with the details of this subtly futuristic environment than it is about existential questions that the characters face. By being more specific in its environment, the more universal the emotions become. There’s an unhurried, day-to-day mundanity to this world and in this family’s midcentury home, and it’s all for the better in connecting with a story about memory and human connection. Following a cool, energetic dazzler of a credit sequence—an in-sync dance-off competition among families across the globe—the film slides back into a quiet, languid rhythm. Colin Farrell gives, if memory serves, his most deeply moving and empathetic performance, and he even gets to tap into his comedic skills in one scene with a Werner Herzog impression. With Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith and adorably sprightly feature newcomer Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja make a lovely familial unit.

So low-key and delicate that it could break for impatient viewers, “After Yang” is reflective science fiction that’s as cerebral as it is emotional. Whereas a big studio might have given its filmmaker notes and made them turn this material into a paranoid thriller, Kogonada’s film makes far more of a lasting imprint. It’s a bit of a lesson-learning film in a way, but more thoughtful and not in that pat, Hollywoodized sort of way. More importantly, the film explores race, grief, and the essence of being human without feeling like it’s tackling too much. Ethereal, beautifully poignant, and soulful, “After Yang” just feels like life.

Grade: B +

A24 is releasing “After Yang” (96 min.) in theaters and on Showtime in March 4, 2022.