2023-10-24 18:21:11
The Pod Generation **
by Sophie Barthes
Franco-American film, 1h50
Technology booming in this near future? The artificial uterus which frees mothers from the enslavement of pregnancy with its attendant nausea and fatigue. Rachel signed up for the long waiting list for Pegasus, a company that offers this much-in-demand service. The hierarchy of this appreciated executive will give her a financial boost as soon as she has a place. When Pegasus tells her that she will soon be able to have a baby in an artificial uterus, Rachel can no longer back down: she must talk to her companion Alvy. But this original remains a fan of old-fashioned pregnancies. It must be said that this plant biologist loves nothing more than nature.
The Time.news of an extraordinary pregnancy
After a wise and elegant adaptation of Madame Bovary with Mia Wasikowska, the Frenchwoman living in the United States Sophie Barthes leaps forward several centuries to imagine the beginnings of ectogenesis, which makes possible the development of the embryo and fetus outside the maternal uterus. With its cutting-edge technology and attractive design, the pod (the “pod”) stands out as a desirable object. Worn using a system of attachments, it allows men and women to proudly display their unborn baby on their stomach, but also to leave it at home.
Far from apologizing for it, the film examines all aspects of this “progress”: a discourse of feminist emancipation which hides the lucrative commodification of a natural function. A source of enormous profits, the pod ensures that the productivity of female employees is not reduced, with women becoming men like any other.
The Pod Generation gets as close as possible to its characters: Rachel (Emilia Clarke) excited to access this innovative service and become a mother; Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who follows suit since, ultimately, their child will be born. Their sharper opposition would have given more bite to a scenario which does not exploit its full potential.
The film sometimes seems to get lost in the Time.news of this extraordinary pregnancy to the point of being a little stretched – to emphasize the incompressible time of gestation, even artificial? In elegant blue and sand tones and an aesthetic reminiscent of Her Spike Jonze The Pod Generation draws in the background a world governed by artificial intelligence. In this urban universe with organic and soft forms, nature is at the center of all discourse, but no one has any connection with it anymore.
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