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Plot: young tech employee meets a girl who might, or might not, be a cyborg.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, wrote English writer Charles Caleb Colton famously in 1820. It’s an old adage that rings true across various spectrums of the art world but none illustrates it better than cinema. Entire national cotton industries were spawned to accomodate imitations of the latest cinematic trends. Italy dominated the market for such ventures from, say, the sixies through eighties – but the rest of Meditterranean Europe (especially Spain) and the Philippines were never close behind. The Far East has a long cinematic tradition of the sometimes quite bizarre. In recent years China has emerged as number one in imitating popular movies from the world over on a fraction of the budget and without any of the talent. The Temptation of the Maid (released regionally as 超能萌女友 or Super Cute Girlfriend and The AI Housemaid, depending on your preference) is a Chinese reimagining and partial merging of two popular Japanese movies from a decade prior. As always with these kind of ventures it behoofs one to see the originals prior to this tolerable derivation.

Whenever a movie reaches a certain point of cultural – or critical mass regional imitations are bound to follow. The Temptation of the Maid (or alternatively The AI Housemaid, as it will be referred to hereafter) from director Xu Zeyu is not only a loose remake of Jae-young Kwak’s My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) but attempts to tug on the heart strings very much in the way of Hirokazu Kore’eda’s Air Doll (2009) and even has Zhang Lijun dressing up as a French chambermaid just like Bae Doo-na did in the earlier movie. The AI Housemaid fares as well as you’d expect under what are far from optimal circumstances, most of which can be leveled at the screenplay from Xu Zeyu and Zhang Miao as well as this being a Q1Q2 production. Both men understand what made Jae-young Kwak’s original work so well yet their screenplay blunders in some pretty crucial areas. A few details have been changed around to hide the obvious thievery and the men even stumble onto a good idea occassionally either intentionally or by mistake. Suffice to say The AI Housemaid never come close to My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) in terms of emotional resonance, although it never stops trying.

In a surge of electricity white-hooded Xiao Xia (Zhang Lijun) appears in a parking garage in Shanghai. There she runs into an understandably confused Sam Jiaoshou (Cao Shengming) from who she picks up speech patterns and a simulacrum of humanity. In a department store in the city she runs into Cao Xiaoming (Chen Yuan) who is in the process of buying himself a present for his 32nd birthday. There Xiao Xia steals some expensive clothes, walks funnily in front of him and buys a cake at the bakery. The two end up Xiaoming’s favorite restaurant and, after an extended detour across the city, Cao realizes that Xiao Xia (or Little Summer) isn’t a ghost, a stray, or a beggar girl, and decides to take his new companion to his apartment. There he learns that she’s a cyborg sent to him by his senior aged, paralyzed future self (Fang Shialing) to look after his needs in the present time. At first he’s irked by Little Summer’s child-like antics but he eventually warms up her innocence and naivety. As an employee at a technology company Little Summer inspires him to invent a line of housemaid cyborgs, prompting Sam Jiaoshou to stage the world’s worst planned home invasion to obtain said designs. As always The AI Housemaid intervenes and diffuses the situation. Many years pass and Cao Xiaoming has fallen deeply in love with Little Summer. He realizes that The AI Housemaid has changed his destiny several times by just being with him.

At the forefront of Chinese cinema in the past several years have been the Film Bureau and Q1Q2. Both have been flooding the Internet with some of the cheapest (and, occasionally, good) productions across a variety of genres. Whereas the Film Bureau usually helms moderately budgeted genre pieces Q1Q2 always manages to do whatever the Film Bureau does far quicker, cheaper and with considerably less star-power. Before anything else The AI Housemaid is a largely faithful Mainland China remake of the Japanese movie My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) from a decade before. For the most part The AI Housemaid is able to work around its more obvious budgetary limitations (there is no grand disaster set to happen, special effect shots are kept to a minimum as is Zhang Lijun’s wardrobe, and choreography-centric action are fazed out almost entirely). What keeps The AI Housemaid from reaching its full potential is a widely uneven screenplay that checks all the boxes for a remake, occasionally wanders into a good idea but most of the time staggers around with no sense of direction. The pre-credit opening montage gives the impression that The AI Housemaid will be going for Cutie Honey: Tears (2016) production design but no such thing will be forthcoming.

My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) was Jae-young Kwak’s love note to James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The AI Housemaid ends up imitating several of the Terminator inspired scenes from the original but apparently has no idea why they were there in the first place. Most of the key scenes have some kind of equivalent in The AI Housemaid and where the screenplay deviates from the Japanese original is typically where it falls short too. The only thing that the screenplay by Xu Zeyu and Zhang Miao actually improves upon is by giving the cyborg a name and making her the viewpoint character. The AI Housemaid is, first and foremost, the story of Little Summer whereas My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) was ostensibly told from Jiro’s perspective. Chen Yuan is scruffy and likeable enough but he’s no Keisuke Koide. Not even by a long shot. In her part news anchor Zhang Lijun (张丽君) is adorable enough but Yang Ke, Mavis Pan Shuang-Shuang, Ada Liu Yan, Patricia Hu, Liu Zhimin, or Ni Ni (neither of whom this production could possibly afford) would’ve been a far better fit for the part that Haruka Ayase played. Despite that one major improvement, The AI Housemaid never becomes more than the sum of its various borrowed parts.

The initial meet-cute on the streets is virtually identical and it even copies the same joke (Cao Xiaoming crashes into a lamppost), like Haruka Ayase in My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) Zhang Lijun too zaps someone in the mall (not with her eyes, but with her fingertips), and the obligatory dance scene is rather improvised compared to the “do the robot” dance scene in the original. In The AI Housemaid it’s Lijun who gorges on spaghetti the way Keisuke Koide did in the original and the inciting incident is a home invasion instead of a restaurant shooting. Both cyborg girls project a holographic recording from their future masters out of their eyes but with Little Summer there’s no dramatic build-up to the third act resolution. That Xu Zeyu and Zhang Miao don’t grasp the original’s far more subtleler moments is abundantly clear through out. There’s no equivalent to the “thumbs up” scene, there’s no pet named Raoul (or a counterpart for such), and Cao Xiaoming doesn’t travel back to his hometown either. One of the most genuinely touching moments in My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) is when Jiro breaks up with Cyborg She in a confused, drunken stupor and immediately regrets his decision afterwards. When the Tokyo earthquake hits and the two confess their feelings for each other it offers a profoundly moving emotional resolution to the second act conflict. The AI Housemaid blunders most catastrophically by not setting up any meaningful conflict or break-up in whichever form and thus there’s no dramatic tension. When Cao Xiaoming and Little Summer do get together in the third act it irrevocably rings hollow as neither has experienced any sort of growth or arc.

In recent years there has been a considerable influx of mostly Chinese imitations. Whether it’s the more conceptually ambitious and action-oriented Super Robot Girl (2015) or more plain comedic exercises as Jing Wong’s iGirl (2016) (with Chrissie Chau Sau-Na, Connie Man Hoi-Ling, and Joyce Cheng Yan-Yi), Heavenly Machine Maid (2017) (with Liu Zhimin), the Mainland China iGirl (2017), or Be Careful! Single Pain (2018) (with Wu Hao) they all draw heavily from either Jae-young Kwak’s My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) or Hirokazu Kore’eda’s Air Doll (2009). More often than not they seem hellbent on combining the two to varying levels of success. What they all invariably have in common is that sooner or later one or more of the cyborg girls will end up in a French chambermaid costume. Another thing these imitations all have in common is a tendency to be emaciated in terms of plot and feature tubby, blackrimmed glasses wearing socially handicapped nerd types in need of a confidence boost. The cycle of otaku fantasy fulfillment movies aren’t all that surprising in light of China’s fairly recent adoption of Japanese culture and entertainment. The problem of socially withdrawn youths or hikikomori seems to be manifesting in China as well. That domestic cinema would pick up on that shift seems only natural and logical. A decade-plus removed from the original it’s puzzling that there has been neither an American or Bollywood remake at this point, especially in light of the original My Sassy Girl (2001).

That there was going to be a world of difference between The AI Housemaid and My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) was all but expected given the decade between both. Given the modesty of its budget it never was going to be able to compete with the original and its muddy screenplay only serves to make matters worse. Had this been given the big budget remake treatment then perhaps it would have fared better. Most remakes try to recreate the magic from the original without always grasping what exactly inspired said magic in the first place. The AI Housemaid is no different in that regard. It slavishly recreates many scenes from My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) but hardly, if ever, understands why they worked so well in the original. Vanilla Sky (2001) was a soulless Hollywoodization of the Spanish fantastique Open Your Eyes (1997), the American The Ring (2002) and The Eye (2008) barely understood why Ringu (1998) and The Eye (2002) worked so well within their respective cultural confines. After all China’s CCTV6 remade National Treasure (2004) as The Empire Symbol (2013). Remakes that improve upon the original are far and few to begin with. The AI Housemaid is a valiant attempt to interpret a Japanese/Korean movie for a Mainland China audience and, to a certain degree, it works as intended. More importantly, however, is that The AI Housemaid never resonates quite in the same way as Jae-young Kwak’s original work from whence it was derived. As hard as it might try The AI Housemaid is not the sprawling romance it probably ought have been – and that’s a pity because Chinese culture is usually better attuned to this sort of thing.

Plot: superhuman vigilante leads the rebellion against an oppressive regime.

Twelve years removed from the first Cutie Honey (2004) there were bound to be some significant differences between the original and its eventual sequel. Cutie Honey: Tears (2016) takes more after Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) than it does after the earlier Hideaki Anno adaptation and sees Mariya Nishiuchi (西内 まりや) taking on Eriko Satô’s role. That the 2004 adaptation was acquired taste was putting it mildly and Cutie Honey: Tears is as much of a reboot as it is a sequel, direct or otherwise. Outside of a few character names Cutie Honey: Tears bears almost no resemblance to the 1972 Gô Nagai manga from whence it came. It probably would have functioned better as a stand-alone feature. Instead of adapting one of Nagai’s storylines Cutie Honey: Tears feels more like an introductory chapter to a much larger narrative than a continuation of an already established one. This Cutie Honey is much more inspired by classic science-fiction literature than its goofy predecessor.

In a desolate, colorless metropolis under a repressive, totalitarian regime society has organized itself into a fortified vertical city. The upper-class elite continues its decadent lifestyle in the upper floors of the skyscraper causing acid rain and poisonous fog below as an unfortunate by-product of their living. The designer of the city Doctor Kisaragi (Kôichi Iwaki) built the fortification with the noblest of intentions, to offer shelter from the increasingly deterioriating weather conditions caused by pollution. One day his daughter Hitomi (Mariya Nishiuchi) is involved in a near-fatal accident. The good doctor resurrects Hitomi as a near-invincible android powered by nanotechnology and allows her to retain her memory and human emotions. Lady Yiru (Nicole Ishida) is the steely-eyed, iron-fisted matriarch that oversees the day-to-day operations of the city. Together with her assistant / security detail Rukia (Hina Fukatsu) she does not tolerate any form of opposition. Fearing that the doctor has ulterior motives she corners him on the top floors of the city. While Doctor Kisaragi is killed in the ensuing firefight Hitomi falls to the floors below where she is accepted among the lower caste as one of their own. The bowels of the city are overflowing with dissension and a rebel enclave is forming.

A small group of resistance fighters consisting of Kazuhito Uraki (Sôsuke Takaoka), Ryuta Kimura (Tasuku Nagase), and Yukiko Kiyose (Ren Imai) believe that they may have found a way to stop Lady Yuri’s oppressive regime. Reporter Seiji Hayami (Takahiro Miura) is sympathetic to their cause ever since he saw what he purported to be an angel falling from the sky when he was a small boy. Researching an article for an underground publication he runs into a reclusive stray girl. When he sees her single-handedly laying waste to some heavily-armed patrolling security units intimidating civilians on the lower floors he’s impressed. Hayami’s discovery plays into the hands of the rebels who finally have found the one who could help them overthrow the repressive regime. Hayami is instructed to recruit Hitomi Kisaragi to the cause. Hitomi is initially reluctant but it isn’t until the armed personnel of Lady Yiru force her to don her long dormant Cutie Honey costume, an alter ego she had since shed or at least hidden very well. Together with Hayami and the rebels Cutie Honey stands up against the regime but to save the city’s inhabitants a mere confrontation will not suffice. It will require Cutie Honey to take a decision with far-reaching consequences that will change everything for everyone.

There seems to be a concerted effort on part of director Takeshi Asai to take Cutie Honey into more edgier, more intellectually stimulating realms. Cutie Honey: Tears incorporates about every known cyberpunk convention since time immemorial or at least since Metropolis (1927) and George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984 set them in stone. The production design echoes Blade Runner (1982) and Nemesis (1992) with desolate, fog-shrouded featureless grey cityscapes drenched in neon lights and giant LED screens. There’s the prerequisite ubiquitous monitoring system with surveillance drones and automated armored personnel patrolling the streets. A totalitarian dystopia presided over by an authoritarian AI that just happens to look like Nicole Ishida (石田ニコル). It’s as if someone read Conception 5, the short story Burton C. Bell wrote that served as the conceptual basis for “Obsolete”, and fleshed it out into a 90 minute feature. Cutie Honey: Tears answers the question what the Fear Factory music video for ‘Resurrection’ would have looked like if it was extended into medium-budget feature. Who would’ve thunk we’d see the day of there being social commentary in a Cutie Honey flick.

That Cutie Honey: Tears distances itself as far as humanly possible from Cutie Honey (2004) is evident from the opening. Cutie Honey and her scientist father excluded there’s only reporter Seiji Hayami from the Gô Nagai manga. Conspicuously absent is police officer Natsuko Aki which could easily have been Ren Imai’s part as a member of the resistance. Lady Yiru is the closest thing to a Sister Jill and Cutie Honey herself is nigh on unrecognizable from her earlier incarnation. There are no instances of Mariya Nishiuchi either running around in skimpy lingerie (which is strange considering she rose to fame for just that as a gravure model), lounging in a bubblebath or pressing the heart-shaped button on her collar and yelling: “HONEY FLASH!” before transforming. Even the Cutie Honey costume is much more practical and quite a deviation from the Nagai original. Whereas the Cutie Honey portrayals of Eriko Satô and Mikie Hara was little more than thinly-veiled fanservice Mariya Nishiuchi offers a more brooding take on the character. There are more than a few shades of Batman Begins (2005) and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012) as a whole to be found here. Even the action direction has improved in strides and there’s some good bouts of wire-fu to be had.

Cutie Honey: Tears offers a measure of restraint and some honest-to-Odin effort went into the plot, predictable as though it might be. The giggly performances of Eriko Satô and Mikie Hara in the role were mostly played for chuckles and cheap tittilation. Mariya Nishiuchi on the other hand offers a more nuanced, layered interpretation of a character that never had much depth to begin with. Nishiuchi is mostly a television actress that has done little of importance outside the romance The Land Of Rain Trees (2015). In the West Nicole Ishida is perhaps best known for her recurring guest role in a handful of episodes of the limited series Atelier (2015) (known as Underwear in North America). Ishida is, of course, sassied up quite a bit in her part here. Nishiuchi and Ishida are surrounded by a mostly unknown array of supporting players. Sôsuke Takaoka and Takahiro Miura are by far the most famous, even moreso than Nishiuchi and Ishida combined. Takaoka debuted in Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000) and has worked with Takashi Miike on several occassions. With the avalanche of Marvel and DC Comics that has been flooding the multiplexes in the last decade or so Japan was bound to do some reinventing of its own. Cutie Honey: Tears reinterprets Gô Nagai’s most enduring creation for a new time and it does so in a way that might even appeal to Western audiences. Perhaps that was what the Cutie Honey franchise needed. If Krrish (2006) can find a mass audience in India, then why not Cutie Honey in Japan?