TEKNOLUST [ 1/2] (one and one-half stars)
Almost interesting sci-fi. Running time: 85 minutes. Rated R (adult themes). At the Village East, Second Avenue and 12th Street.
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THOUGH at her best in Hollywood fare like “The Beach,” the highly talented British actress Tilda Swinton has always had a predilection – or weakness – for pretentious “experimental” art films.
“Teknolust,” in which she deftly plays four roles – a dowdy scientist and her three glamorous clones – is an example of the latter.
The film clearly intended to be a clever sci-fi fantasy exploring profound cyber-age questions about love, sex and identity.
Unfortunately, it’s muddled and shallow and obvious. Worse, it fails as entertainment, being so ineptly directed and written it often has the feel of a high school production by kids with more money and ambition than talent.
Swinton’s Dr. Rosetta Stone is a dowdy scientist who has made three clones of herself: Olive, Ruby and Marinne.
To survive, the three clones, or “self replicating androids,” require regular injections of male DNA in the form of sperm.
So every day Ruby goes out into San Francisco, picks up a man, has protected sex with him and brings back the condom to provide DNA for herself and her sisters.
This works fine until the men she’s picked up start to develop a strange illness, the symptoms of which include impotence, the appearance of a bar code on their foreheads and the crashing of their computer hard drives.
Soon Rosetta’s own employers start an investigation led by private investigators Dirty Dick (Karen Black, looking suspiciously like a man in drag) and Hopper (James Urbaniak) into what seems to be the spreading of a virus from computers to human beings.
Meanwhile, Ruby begins to discover love with a sad-sack print-shop employee (Jeremy Davies, a mannered actor whose talents seem more limited with every film he makes).
Much of this never makes sense. And instead of being smart, provocative or sexy, it’s strangely bland.