The Perfect Lover (aka Personhood)
This Australian indie flick appears to have seriously polarized viewers, which I suppose is understandable, given the minimal amount of either action or character development. Nonetheless, it held its own for me as a cerebral, humanist sci-fi—almost a pee-wee cousin to "Ex Machina"—and for its best parts, which were a substantial portion of its runtime, made it a much better movie than it deserved to be.
A nebbishy and perhaps socially maladapted outcast, with (we finally see halfway through the movie) an obvious physical deformity, buys a stereotypically gorgeous, Barbie-doll-like sex robot, played by an Danish actress of the type only Scandinavia seems to produce. Half the movie is a quiet exploration of his uneasy relationship with her, and for me, this is the best part. Eventually his ne'er-do-well hypermasculine brother shows up for an unannounced visit, and initially doesn't realize she's a robot, and sexual tension builds, despite…
