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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: not everything is what it seems in an utopian elite community…

Perfect-Lover.com (程序戀人 domestically and Perfect-Lover.com 2036 internationally) is in all likelihood the finest new robot lover feature. Not that things weren’t pointing to such eventuality with South Korea delivering I’m Not A Robot (로봇이 아니야 ) (2017), Are You Human Too? (너도 인간이니) (2018), and My Holo Love (나 홀로 그대) (2020). A decade’s worth of lesser imitations (some charming in their own dim way) hasn’t dulled the resonating power of My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) and Air Doll (2009) in the slightest. Perfect-Lover.com showcases that once every few years Mainland China produces a piece of cinema that just might take off internationally. That there hasn’t been a US remake of My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) is, by all means, a good thing as it’s too quirky to appeal to general audiences. Perfect-Lover.com (Perfect Lover hereafter) on the other hand is slick and has enough international cross-market appeal as to function a pilot for a series or to be expanded into a two-hour theatrical feature. Neither is it in any shape or form affiliated with the 2019 Migi Studio-Green Curry/Mango Party casual adult videogame of the same name.

In the past decade Mainland China has greatly contributed to the world of otaku fantasy fulfillment – and not necessarily for the better. The quality of the screenplay is inversely proportional to the bust size of whichever Weibo model or hostess happens to portray the A.I. girlfriend. For every iGirl (2016) there’s a Heavenly Machine Maid (2017) and for every Inflatable Lover (2017) there’s a much better Inflatable Girlfriend (2018). Some are as sentimental and romantic as My Holo Love (2020) and precious few are as well-written as I’m Not A Robot (2017) or Are You Human Too? (2018). It almost goes without saying that the law of diminishing returns is the only constant with these features and no matter which part of My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) and Air Doll (2008) they are imitating, there’s always someone worse. Seldom are any of these features able to compete with their South Korean counterparts and even rarer are the ones able to stand on equal footing with their original inspirations. Perfect Lover is one such occasion and the new Sino standard for these things.

The year is 2036. Society is organized through big data analysis and the determinant factor for anybody’s lifestyle and class is their personal SCP (Social Credit Points). To obtain a higher SCP and climb the social ladder everyone works to improve their reputation, status, gain, and respect. To allow humanity to continually better themselves AI technology has advanced to such a degree that humans and robots coexist and are virtually impossible to tell apart. Ming (Ming Dao) has a score of 9.0 and as the world’s highest-ranking designer he has constructed Nuremberg, a private community exclusive to 8.0 or higher senior members strictly off-limits for robots of any kind. Chloe (Marina Ye Qing) is a young woman with a 6-point SCP that has spent much of her years in celibacy to obtain impeccable credentials to maximize her upward social mobility. She’s elated when she’s among the select few qualifying for access to the upper social echelons and all the perks that come with it. When Ming was promoted she became an 8-point senior through association and now is expected to enter into Nuremberg. At the welcoming party Ming and his wife Anna (Sarah Bolger) are the power couple and celebrities in their own right. Ming and Chloe engage in a philosophical debate about the merits of celibacy and companionship - but Chloe can’t help but notice that her being single is frowned upon. She surmises that in order to fully integrate she’s expected to have an equally outstanding partner at her side.

For years Chloe has longed for a lover but she never had the time because of her single-minded focus on maximizing her SCP score. Many nights of soul-searching and crying her eyes out pass. In a moment of paralyzing desperation, she decides to log in on perfect-lover.com and customizes a personal cyborg companion with help from tech support (Xu Kai-Cheng). The next day the order is delivered at her studio. Angelo (Marcelo Olguín) is exactly what the site promised he would be and thus is perfect in every conceivable way. Chloe is blissfully happy to have him around and soon the two are inseparable. The one caveat with perfect-lover.com is that buyers are instructed to take an amnesia pill once the transaction is complete. In her euphoria Chloe has forgotten, and she has been invited to the next Nuremberg social engagement. At the party Chloe and Angelo are the center of attention yet Ming is strangely reserved. He finds Chloe’s sudden social upgrade suspicious and lectures her on the strict no-robot policy of the community and the immediate expulsion in which it results. When Angelo comes to Chloe’s defense Ming is not afraid to pull a gun. The two engage in an altercation and in the fracas it becomes clear that Ming has a sordid secret of his own.

The most interesting aspect of Perfect Lover perhaps is its curious mix of Eastern and Western talent behind and in front of the camera. Headlining is prolific television actress Marina Ye Qing (叶青). The most recognizable thing she has done (at least to Western eyes) is a 2016 Sino remake of My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). Then there’s Xu Kai-Cheng in a speaking part. He most recently turned up in the fantasy wuxia The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2020). How Sarah Bolger from In America (2002), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) and the television series The Tudors (2008-2010) and Once Upon a Time (2012-2015) ended up in Mainland China is anybody’s guess but, as always, she’s solid and reliable. The same goes for Argentinian model/talent scout Marcelo Olguín, and famed Hollywood directors of photography Stuart Bentley and Tom Wilkinson. Olguín commutes frequently between America and China, but for Bolger and the two DPs this looks to have been nothing more than a one-off venture outside of their familiar Anglo-Saxon territories.

In just 20 minutes Perfect Lover examines everything from social order and hierarchy, racial segregation and – profiling, to the advent of artificial intelligence, and the commodification of said technology in the global marketplace, the transactional nature of artificial companionship, as well as mechanized miscegenation, robot ethics and law, and reactionary political minorities that are bound to crop up in light of such social – and technological advancements. It comes as a timely a response to the growing problem of hikikomori (social withdrawal typically afflicting adolescent males initially believed to be a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, as first observed by researcher Yoshimi Kasahara in 1978, and studied more in depth by psychiatrist Tamaki Saito in 1998) and the far more toxic Western variant of the incel.

Call Perfect Lover a modern-day The Creation of the Humanoids (1962), if you will – but as a short feature it is wonderfully literate, graceful in its sophistication, cerebral without becoming overly talky or pretentious, and unafraid to venture headlong into intellectually challenging/stimulating territory. The beauty of Perfect Lover is the degree of nuance in how it treats its various questions and observations. It took what My Girlfriend Is A Cyborg (2008) explored on a personal level and applies it to a much larger societal – and economic framework. Perfect Lover is not afraid to ask big questions and this is probably the closest to a modern-day thematic continuation/expansion upon the foundation of Blade Runner (1982). Perfect Lover understands that the devil is always in the details and it handles them so elegantly and effortlessly. Quite ambitious for an unassuming made-for-streaming short film that you can find, subtitled and all, with a just a few simple clicks on YouTube (or Youku in the homeland).