{"id":593706,"date":"2026-05-20T03:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T03:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/593706\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T03:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T03:56:08","slug":"sheep-in-the-box-review-a-bland-baffling-tale-of-ai-children-from-hirokazu-kore-eda-cannes-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/593706\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheep in the Box review \u2013 a bland, baffling tale of AI children from Hirokazu Kore-eda | Cannes film festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hirokazu Kore-eda\u2019s new film is a bafflingly unsatisfying and unconvincing muddle of ideas and moods; it is a futurist fable of AI-humanoid robot children, unpersuasively performed in a returning keynote of bland serenity. It is perhaps comparable to Kore-eda\u2019s 2009 film Air Doll<\/a>, a more adult story of man whose sex doll secretly comes to life.<\/p>\n

Otone (Haruka Ayasi) \u2013 an architect who appears to work from home, with no office scenes or colleagues visible \u2013 is an educated woman married to down-to-earth Kensuke (Daigo Yamamoto), a carpenter who likes beer and playing baseball. Two years previously, their seven-year-old son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), was killed by a hit-and-run driver who has never been caught. They are approached by a company called REbirth, whose offices are huge and white with creepy logos and designs, like all sinister corporations in the movies, although the question of whether REbirth is supposed to be sinister is one of the film\u2019s many unanswered questions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

REbirth offer a promotional free offer: an ultra-hi-tech humanoid robot replica (or replicant) of Kakeru, whose physical form, speech patterns and memories they can fabricate using videos, photos and other research materials provided by the stricken parents. The new Kakeru can stay with them for however long it takes to get through the grieving process. And when this stunningly convincing Kakeru 2.0 is delivered at the couple\u2019s home, the audience will surely be expecting some emotional fireworks or, if those fireworks are absent, then a surely a very significantly numbed lack of emotion. But we get neither: Otone and Kensuke are bizarrely matter-of-fact; they behave as if some very sophisticated iPhone has been delivered. Otone\u2019s mother faints when she sees the robot \u2013 but recovers quickly.<\/p>\n

Otone wants to make a success of their new arrival, while Kensuke is grumpily unsure about the whole idea. He harshly tells \u201cKakeru\u201d not to call him daddy \u2013 an instruction which has its ironic backlash when the police suspect him and \u201cKakeru\u201d on the street of being a paedophile and victim. It\u2019s a subplot punchline of sorts, not quite funny, not successfully serious. The tonal oddity of the film continues, trying to be a sci-fi dystopia and yet also a relatable heartbreaker about parental grief; these two modes simply undermine each other. Nor does the film attempt comedy, as in Spike Jonze\u2019s Her<\/a> \u2013 the intention is always seraphically serious.<\/p>\n

Kensuke at one stage brings this \u201cKakeru\u201d to the scene of the hit-and-run crime that killed their son, to see if the robot will remember or recover details of the culprit\u2019s identity; this is a rather clever Hollywood-ish idea, one of many the film doesn\u2019t pursue. He also uses \u201cKakeru\u201d as a kind of confessor to whom he can admit his own guilt about the boy\u2019s death; this idea is also left undeveloped.<\/p>\n

Yet it is not enough for the film to ponder the existence of just this uncanny-valley robot child. It turns out that other abandoned or otherwise feral robot children have made contact with \u201cKakeru\u201d, effectively planning a kind of replicant revolt, representing a yearning for freedom which the film finally appears to endorse. (As with other films about rebellious AI robots, you have to wonder about battery life.)<\/p>\n

And so the film finally comes to its end, unsatisfying and baffling to the last, accompanied by its dreamy-sweet music. There\u2019s nothing wrong with film-makers leaving their comfort zone and going for a big swing but this just doesn\u2019t work; it isn\u2019t as interesting as films on similar themes including Kogonada\u2019s After Yang<\/a> and Benjamin Cleary\u2019s Swan Song<\/a>. The story is misconceived and Kore-eda\u2019s quietist, un-emphasised style doesn\u2019t suit it.<\/p>\n

Sheep in the Box screened at the Cannes film festival<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hirokazu Kore-eda\u2019s new film is a bafflingly unsatisfying and unconvincing muddle of ideas and moods; it is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-593706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}