Simone (2002 film)

Simone (stylized as S1m0ne) is a 2002 American science fiction film written, produced, and directed by Andrew Niccol. It stars Al Pacino, Catherine Keener, Evan Rachel Wood, Rachel Roberts, Jay Mohr, and Winona Ryder. The story follows a fading director creating a virtual actor to star in his films and the attempts he makes to keep her non-presence a secret as she becomes more famous. Simone garnered mixed reviews from critics but was a minor box-office hit, grossing $19.6 million worldwide against its $10 million budget.

Simone
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAndrew Niccol
Produced byAndrew Niccol
Written byAndrew Niccol
StarringAl Pacino
Catherine Keener
Pruitt Taylor Vince
Jay Mohr
Music byCarter Burwell
CinematographyEdward Lachman
Edited byPaul Rubell
Distributed byNew Line Cinema
Release date
  • August 23, 2002 (2002-08-23)
Running time
118 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$10 million
Box office$19.6 million

Plot

When Nicola Anders (Winona Ryder), the star of the new film by out-of-favor director Viktor Taransky (Al Pacino), refuses to finish it, Taransky is forced to find a replacement. Contractual requirements totally prevent using her image in the film, so he must re-shoot. Instead, Taransky experiments with a new computer program he inherits from late acquaintance Hank Aleno (Elias Koteas) which allows the creation of a computer-generated woman which he can easily animate to play the film's central character. Taransky names his virtual actor "Simone," a name derived from the computer program's title, Simulation One. Seamlessly incorporated into the film, Simone (Rachel Roberts) gives a fantastic performance, exactly controlled by Taransky. The film is immediately a huge success. The studio, and soon the world, ask "who is Simone?"

Taransky initially claims that Simone is a recluse and requests her privacy be respected, but that only intensifies media demands for her to appear. Taransky intends to reveal the secret of her non-existence after the second picture. To satisfy demand, he executes a number of progressively ambitious stunts relying on misdirection and cinematic special effects technology. Eventually, it escalates to simulated remote location video live interviews.

In one instance, two determined tabloid reporters discover Taransky used out-of-date stock photography as a background during an interview instead of being on that site as claimed, and they blackmail him into getting Simone to make a live appearance. He arranges her to perform a song at a stadium event appearing in a cloud of smoke and then using flawless holographic technology. The perception of being in person is reinforced with real-time visualization on the stadium's monitors. Simone becomes even more famous, simultaneously becoming a double winner for the Academy Award for Best Actress, tying with herself in the process.

Once Taransky grows tired of Simone constantly overshadowing him in the press, he decides to ruin her career. Simone's next film, I Am Pig, is her "directorial debut" and a tasteless treatment about zoophilia intended to disgust audiences. Not only does it fail to achieve the desired effect of audience alienation, but it also serves to foster her credibility as a risk-taking, fearless and avant-garde artist. Taransky's subsequent attempts to discredit Simone—by having her drink, smoke, and curse at public appearances and use politically incorrect statements—similarly backfire when the press instead begins to see her as refreshingly honest. As a last resort, Taransky decides to dispose of Simone completely by using a computer virus to erase her, dumping the hard drive and floppy disks into a steamer trunk, burying the trunk at sea, and then announcing to the press that she has died of a rare virus contracted on her Goodwill Tour of the Third World. During the funeral, the police interrupt, open the coffin and find only a cardboard cutout of Simone. He is arrested and shown a security camera video where he loads a large trunk onto his yacht.

After being charged with her murder, he admits that Simone is not a person, but a computer program. The chest containing the computer data is brought up empty. Taransky's daughter Lainey and ex-wife Elaine enter his studio to try to help. They find Taransky's forgotten virus source disk (Plague) and apply an anti-virus program to eradicate the computer virus. They restore Simone and have her appear on national television laughing while holding up a newspaper headline with her obituary. They pick up a confused Taransky, with whom Elaine asks to get back together. In the end, Simone and Taransky are remotely interviewed at home about their new (virtual) baby, used as a cover story for her absence. Simone is concerned about her child's future and decides to enter politics.

Special effects

The film shows how the fake is produced using the chroma key technique. A post-credits sequence shows Viktor creating fake footage of Simone in a supermarket, which one of her pursuers sees, believing it real.

Cast

Reception

Box office

The film opened at #9 on the North American box office chart, grossing US$3,813,463 in its opening weekend. The film grossed $19,576,023 worldwide.[1]

Critical response

Simone received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 50% approval rating based on 159 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's consensus reads: "The satire in S1m0ne lacks bite, and the plot isn't believable enough to feel relevant."[2] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 49, based on 38 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[3]

Roger Ebert was critical of Niccol wasting his premise by giving it a broad appeal with "sitcom simplicity" and his cast a narrow direction for their characters, saying "He wants to edge it in the direction of a Hollywood comedy, but the satire is not sharp enough and the characters, including the ex-wife, are too routine."[4] The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw wrote that "It's reasonable material, but there are no real plot twists or unexpected implications; it all just rolls out easily in a Hollywood that director Niccol makes appear so unreal as to be an easy target".[5] Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle said, "What really irked me about Simone was that it stank of the very thing it appeared to be mocking: it's a big-budget, commercial film taking potshots at big-budget, commercial filmmaking (as well as overripe, over-earnest indies), and although it strives constantly for a sense of knowing, winking irony, the only thing ironic about it is how much it resembles its supposed target."[6] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times said, "The writer-director Mr. Niccol is satirizing the kinds of dazzling empties he himself has made. [Mr. Niccol is] fascinated with surfaces—the films he's been involved with (he wrote The Truman Show and wrote and directed Gattaca) are a mix of populism and deconstruction. His newest effort, Simone, goes beyond postmodern to post-entertainment—it's tepid and vapid."[7]

See also

References
  1. "Simone (2002)". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved July 14, 2010.
  2. "Simone (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on May 26, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2010.
  3. "S1m0ne Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on June 21, 2020. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
  4. Ebert, Roger (August 23, 2002). "Simone". Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times Media Group. Archived from the original on July 19, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2020 – via RogerEbert.com.
  5. Bradshaw, Peter (October 25, 2002). "Film: Simone". The Guardian. London: Guardian Media Group. Archived from the original on July 18, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
  6. Savlov, Marc (August 23, 2002). "Simone - Movie Review". The Austin Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 17, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
  7. Mitchell, Elvis (August 23, 2002). "Film Review: Got It All (Except a Life)". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Archived from the original on July 18, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
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