Edinburgh International Film Festival

Mechanical Love, a film by Phie Ambo, takes a brilliant look at the future of robotics and androids, and what role they will play in the lives of regular people. Professor Ishiguro tries out a new gemnoid (an android which looks like a twin of a real person) of himself to see what affect it would have on his family. An elderly woman in a German nursing home is given a small robotic seal named Paro to play with and dote upon. Both groups of people have to deal with the robotics and their replacement of living creatures, and discover for themselves their own definition of a real being.
This film is an interesting look at the relations between human beings and robots, and how those relationships will change in the future. It is heartfelt in its successful attempts to show the need for artificial intelligence and lifelike robotics. However, the documentary layout of the film may be a bit of a turn off for some viewers. It is extremely interesting in subject matter and cinematography, but can be a bit taxing on the attention span at times. Mechanical Love is a good movie for a general audience with general interest in the subject, and an excellent movie for a specific audience with more advanced interest in the field. I give it four stars out of five.