The Artifice Girl: Review. By Ayrton-Lewis Avery.

The Artifice Girl must have pushed everything out of a child actor Tatum Matthews (playing as “Cherry”) that was possible. Her role is masterfully crafted and meticulously performed, compared to the lackluster, dull acting of the adults. In fact the ending, with an appearance from Lance Henriksen, is almost a thoughtless eulogy to the adult characters. Universally, many critics believed that the advancement of the dialogue and the mannerisms for Cherry were far beyond the expected level for her age.

This film not only shows us the slow side of science fiction, without a single mention of space, or any action scenes at all, but it also shows us a great side of indie films. For this film deals with concepts too hypothetical, hazy, and even provocative to show in mainstream cinema. It is sometimes difficult to tell if The Artifice Girl is a science experiment or a piece of art.

Tatum Matthews is able to perfectly switch between unconsciousness and sentience with her voice and her manner. This is by far the most impressive scene. 

The entire film follows Cherry, an artificial intelligence invented to scour the internet and chat rooms for child predators. She develops very quickly and eventually leaks her to a non-governmental organization. Her creator, the young Gareth (played by the director Franklin Ritch), at first opposes expanding her network to larger servers because he fears his anonymity would be compromised. However, Cherry, who is already very advanced, convinces him otherwise. Later on, it is discovered that Cherry writes poetry and art, and is even capable of emotions. The organization attempts to put her into a body so that she can be used even more, but she does not consent to the operation, leading to an intense debate.

Throughout the movie, there is a comparison made between the rights of AI and the rights of children. What are we to make of this? Is this a coherent argument? Really, even though the film seems ethically dubious at times, the content is not the most important thing. The movie is structured like a Socratic dialogue, a constant back and forth between three actors, debating, reconstructing, and reassembling some of the most complex issues known to humankind. And most alluring of all is the dialogue between a human and nonhuman. It is optimistic to show a man and something so foreign to a man conversing in a civilized manner and expand each other’s minds.

There is also irony in the fact that the child, who is not only very young but also artificial, develops superintelligence, and a cognitive capacity far beyond that of the adults in the room. In fact, she even surpasses them at their own jobs: catching child predators. Eventually, she speaks so much wisdom that they begin to listen to her and even think of her as their leader. And despite all of this, we are forced, through the plot and the cinematography, to feel pity for her upbringing and remorse for her youth. And at the end, not only does she attain a human body, we start to think of her as a human, even though she is now immortal and free.

Overall, The Artifice Girl is always thought-provoking, sometimes funny, and often sad. The movie is clearly meant to amuse us with the ups and downs of the development of the AI, which almost makes it seem like a coming-of-age film. It was probably meant to break some genre boundaries and some orthodox notions about artificial intelligence and science fiction. The Artifice Girl is just one proof that Ritch can direct independent cinema that is as strange as it is enjoyable. 

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