In After Yang, Colin Farrell explores a new take on sci-fi’s eternal question

polygon.com:

The Polygon team is reporting in from the all-virtual grounds of the 2022 Sundance International Film Festival, with a look at the next wave of upcoming independent releases in sci-fi, horror, and documentary film.

There are so many ways to approach science fiction, from realistic, science-driven stories to fluffy space-fantasy, and from grim dystopian warning stories to sunny takes on the future we could build if we make the right choices. But at heart, a surprisingly vast percentage of the genre boils down to variants on the same basic question: What does being human actually mean? Some stories ask that question by contrasting humanity with non-human life, from aliens to AIs to near-human creations like clones or cyborgs. Others put humans in radically different settings from Earth, to see what about the human condition remains consistent across space and time.

A24’s After Yang, the second feature film from video essayist and Columbus writer-director Kogonada, takes up the old refrain again, this time by dropping an artificial life form in among a blended family, and gauging their responses to him. But Kogonada, adapting Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” takes a new approach to the familiar metaphor. Shortly into the film, that artificial life form malfunctions and becomes inoperable, and each member of the family has to decide not just how to move on without him, but who he was and what he meant to them in the first place.

Jake (Colin Farrell) the father in that family, runs a traditionally minded tea shop, which is clearly struggling to find customers. Still, he pretends to his wife Kyra (Queen & Slim’s Jodie Turner-Smith) that it’s bustling to the point where it cuts into his availability