And now, I am instantly excited for the prospect of Ari Folman’s science fiction feature, The Congress, an idea driven hybrid of live action and animation. After the phenomenal success of his rotoscoped war-drama Waltz with Bashir, it appears that identity and consciousness (two themes that were very much at play in that film) are still on his mind. Here Robin Wright, playing a fictional version of herself who has been retired to raise her son (The Road‘s Kodi Smit-McPhee) for some time – this curious timing considering her astounding turn in the recent House of Cards. Nevertheless, she is convinced by Harvey Keitel and Danny Huston, neither playing fictional versions of themselves, to have her ‘entire self’ digitized into an algorithm. Now in the digital world, there are several versions of her running around yearning to find out their true identity. The animation and the story seem to evoke everything from Cool World to Paprika to Sim0ne, and the modern classic science fiction tones please me greatly. Also noteworthy is that The Congress is all based on Novel from the great Stanislaw Lem (Solaris). The film will make its initial bow quite soon at Cannes and I cannot wait for it to cross the pond.
Hugh Jackman’s character to walk all over her, and while the writing might have offset her obvious subservience by making her handy with a wrench (how unconventional), the fact remains that her presence in the film felt very much like an afterthought.
This isn’t to say that there are no other films featuring positive portrayal of women or female heroines – they are just a little harder to find. 
