Review: “Swan Song” is a high-concept melodrama that’s heavy on the drama, light on the concept
The scene is a flashback, because Poppy has also lost Andre, it turns out, and has only finally emerged from a year mourning her brother’s death as the main story kicks in. As we shortly discover, she’s also about to lose her husband, Cameron , to terminal illness.She doesn’t know it, but he does. To spare his wife and 8-year-old son grief, Cameron has been shopping around for a high-tech solution, and he thinks he’s found one, in the boutique biotech services of one Jo Scott .
There’s only one catch: Cameron can’t, contractually, tell his family what he’s about to do, which means that, once the switcheroo is performed, Cameron will have to spend the short remainder of his days hiding out at Arras House while Jack — who will be programmed to remember nothing about his hydroponic roots — takes over for him as Cameron.
This struggle tortures Cameron, and Ali is good at conveying it, but “Swan Song” is more of a philosophical weepie than a thriller.The feature debut of Irish writer-director Benjamin Cleary, who won the live-action short Oscar in 2016 for his affecting love story “The Stutterer,” is engineered to make you cry and think, as mentioned above. But “Swan Song” doesn’t really hold up to close or strenuous examination, except with regard to its questions about love and longing.
Aren’t we more than our molecules and memories? What about our, you know, experiences? Don’t they shape us — quite literally, in the scars and bruises we carry from our battles on this Earth — in a way that a lab-grown simulacrum cannot know? Jack may look like Cameron and have his memories, but doesn’t a life that’s truly been lived leave us with more than a shoe box full of mental snapshots, which is how Cleary coveys Cameron’s recollections?“Swan Song” glosses over these themes, while...
As a fairly soggy, two-hankie melodrama, “Swan Song” is effective. But I wouldn’t recommend thinking about it for too long.Comment
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