The Artifice Girl Review | The Canny Valley

Although it boasts a premise that sounds like a run-of-the-mill techno thriller, writer-director-editor-and-co-star Franklin Ritch’s The Artifice Girl is a rare breed of smart and snappy sci-fi. Balancing difficult conversations about where technology is leading the human race with rapid fire dialogue and performance driven drama, The Artifice Girl is both a rarity and one of the biggest surprises of the year thus far. Just don’t go into it expecting what audiences usually get from such films.

The Artifice Girl is divided up into three sections, one set in the not too distant future, the next fifteen years after that, and the final about fifty years from where the film started. They all revolve around the creation, implementation, and rapid evolution of an advanced form of artificial intelligence known as Cherry. Her creator, Gareth (Ritch in the first two-thirds, and Lance Henriksen in the final portion), a 29-year-old programmer and VFX technician from Florida, coded Cherry in secret for a unique and somewhat vengeful purpose. Cherry takes on the appearance of a nine year old girl (played in avatar form by Tatum Matthews) that lures in and traps online predators. Gareth’s creation has piqued the interest of a pair of special investigators (Sinda Nichols and David Girard) who want to team up. Gareth hesitates, not only because his project requires steadfast anonymity to work effectively, but also due to the fact that Cherry is learning and adapting faster than he expected.

Low budgeted but wildly ambitious, The Artifice Girl is the rare example of a film where comparisons to a stage play are a compliment. The literal three act structure of Ritch’s script unfolds in nondescript locations: an interrogation room, a lab, and a basic apartment. There are no frills and no obvious digital effects to be found. No action sequences. No oppressively ominous musical score. No trickery of any sort. The Artifice Girl is little more than bare bones sets where a handful of extremely talented performers are able to engage in increasingly testy and weighty conversations made up of wonderfully rich dialogue. Ritch’s film bristles with the sort of adrenaline rush someone gets from being directly in the room with great performances and storytelling. Outside of the ethical and philosophical issues being bandied about, the eeriest aspect of The Artifice Girl is its uncanny sense of intimacy with the viewer.

Ritch’s dialogue is written and delivered in a lightning fast Mamet style staccato, and all of the core performers are able to deliver rich performances while making sure the viewer can keep up with the pace. Ritch, Nichols, and Girard make for a captivating trio for much of the film, with Matthews establishing a wise beyond her years presence the more Cherry gets fleshed out as a character (literally and figuratively), and Henriksen delivers soulful work when he appears late in the film as an elderly, broken down version of Gareth. All of their performances leave nothing on the table emotionally, allowing the viewer to hang on every lovingly written word. There’s some discussion in The Artifice Girl about the poetry of language, and Ritch firmly leans into such an old fashioned sentiment that’s unique for a futuristic production.

But as the film’s timeliness shows, maybe The Artifice Girl isn’t so futuristic after all. Ritch’s dialogue is all about conveying ethical and moral quandaries surrounding the evolution and usage of advanced technological intelligence. Does AI truly learn or is it merely an evolutionary program created in the image of its master? At a certain point in its evolution, what sort of agency and independence should artificial intelligence be allowed? Is technological and emotional deception allowable if its in service of protecting vulnerable people? If super advanced AI can be created to look into dark corners of the world where humans fear to tread, what kind of toll will that take on something that’s essentially evolving mentally at the same rate as a young person? By the end, The Artifice Girl has made a lot of compelling and surprisingly moving points about how technology can help and hurt in equal, nonjudgmental manners.

The Artifice Girl, with all of its love for poetic language, is also perfectly timed to make people think about the current writer’s strike, which also includes discussions about the use of AI in the near future to come up with stories. There’s a humanity to Ritch’s work that’s remarkably balanced. It’s a film that wouldn’t exist without a great writer, but also one that wouldn’t be half the movie it is without a firm understanding of the issues surrounding artificial intelligence. To do so in a serious, restrained manner when so many other filmmakers would likely take this material into B-movie thriller territory feels revelatory. The Artifice Girl is as thoughtful, smart, and brainy as this year’s similarly themed M3gan was big, dumb, and entertainingly shallow. Both are good movies in their own way, but The Artifice Girl is a lot more art and a lot less commerce.

The Artifice Girl screens for one night only at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 8:55pm, with Franklin Ritch on hand for a Q&A. The film will be available to buy and rent on all major VOD platforms starting Tuesday, May 23.