KIMI (Steven Soderbergh, 2022)

[diamonds]

He just doesn't stop. Soderbergh to direct David Koepp-scripted KIMI starring Zoë Kravitz for HBO.

The film follows an agoraphobic tech worker who discovers recorded evidence of a violent crime during an ordinary data stream review and tries reporting it up the chain of command at her company. Meeting with resistance and bureaucracy, she realizes that in order to get involved, she will have to do the thing she fears the most — leave her apartment.

[The Narrator Returns]

A call for extras casting reveals what's apparently a subplot of KIMI:

When the city council of Seattle passes a “safe zone” law aimed at restricting the movements of the homeless population, local activists take to the streets in protest.

[therewillbeblus]

KIMI will be released on HBO Max Feb 10

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Soderbergh's KIMI, which looks like Alexa Unsane, which I'm fine with.

[therewillbeblus]

KIMI is another fun, intentionally unspectacular genre entry, yet because Soderbergh embraces the conventional structure of a lean B-political thriller, he hones his full attention on the elasticity of mileage he can get out of pristine editing, liberating aesthetic choices, and a couple of creative setpieces. For those who enjoyed the camera angling shifts in Fay Grim, this film amplifies that concept of disorientation to kick off an eclectically-realized third act; a spirited, cathartic pitch after a deliberately protracting albeit tight windup. The first half may alienate some who want 'more' out of the narrative's agility, but it never bores, and rather than promote itself as a setpiece-hopping piece of forward momentum across external spatial domains, Soderbergh is clearly opting for a Rear Window-aping meditation on the infinite possibilities in stationary detailing. Though the Hitchcock riff is amusingly inverted inside the apartment, manipulating the safe release of agoraphobia's directive sublimation into the internet age, replacing gazing out at physical space from a secure distance into the magnetic space of screens, which synonymously services that function by embodying its own 'world'. Plus there are a couple of inspired cameos by comedians in that first section that make its static rhythm incredibly amusing in tempered spurts- better not to look at the casting list in advance to get a high out of the surprises.

[DarkImbecile]

I never wrote it up, but I thought last year's No Sudden Move was the best Soderbergh of the last decade-plus. It felt (in a very nebulous way I'd have trouble defining with any precision) formally and narratively ambitious to an extent that his more exercise-oriented features of late haven't, which kind of caps their ceiling for me as "enjoyable" — to whatever extent one is interested in the genre or formal conventions he's manipulating, and the extent one finds those manipulations worthwhile — but not much more than that. KIMI felt at first like it might hew more to the No Sudden Move end of that spectrum, and even though it ultimately wraps up a little too neatly and abruptly for my tastes, I still enjoyed it more than most of Soderbergh's other recent features.

The two related reasons for that are: a) Zoë Kravitz as protagonist Angela Childs and b) the substantial screentime (roughly half the film) that Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp invest in establishing the particulars of her character's agoraphobia. That latter patience means Kravitz doesn't have to overplay Angela's mental state, and we're given enough time to be exposed to the various facets, roots, and coping mechanisms of her condition in a way that never drags like expositional homework. Angela gets to be a fairly fully-formed individual rather than a collection of tics, which makes both her struggles with her condition and her attempts to do the right thing far more compelling than they might have been.

In terms of social commentary, the film does a solid enough job of evoking the oppressive shadow cast by an intertwining of unregulated, unaccountable, inescapable technology and the predominant American corporate ideology that devalues individuals and social norms that might possibly impede the maximizing of profits. The weakest part of the film, however, is the

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half-assed depiction of the banal CEO villain; I almost wonder if the film would have been even more disconcerting and unsettling if the script had found a way to ultimately make clear why the company might be invested in keeping the audio file MacGuffin from being properly reported without a prologue and exposition scene that depart from Angela's perspective. Making the company's response and the physical danger Angela faces seemingly inexplicable for more of the film's runtime seems like it would have ramped up the paranoia and had us empathizing even more with the tension between her anxiety and her need to overcome it.

Here's a fun in-depth breakdown of the film by David Bordwell, by the way.