Doll#195

Synopsis

Walter, a tech-illiterate retiree with a shady past in the adult film industry, has regrets about his past life choices and is acutely lonely. He is naively enticed into ordering a sex doll from the internet when a couchsurfing guest deliberately leaves his laptop unattended. The order is delivered in a crate to his home, but inside is a living human girl.

Doll#195 is that sort of movie that demands at least one reviewing to capture the explanation of its details – not all of them as the script deliberately leaves out crucial scenes needed for a comprehensive understanding.

The plot is contemporaneous, yet it deals with the recent past, as the protagonist, Walter, is a former adult film star that has not kept up with the new technologies. Emblematically, he still watches his old tapes on a VCR player. Therefore, it is his daughter (who he doesn’t see since he divorced her mother) that manages the paying guests that stay in the house for short periods. This characteristic of Walter is essential to the story, and the scriptwriters wisely call the attention to it.

Written & Directed by

Martin Lloyd, Anja Ramaroson

Martin Lloyd, Anja Ramaroson, Richard Tomes

Produced by

Cast

Paul Hughes, Lou Gala, Fergus Foster

Martin Lloyd, Anja Ramaroson

It is his technological ignorance that makes him believe that the real young woman that is delivered into his home is the doll he has ordered online. By the way, for one moment it seems that the movie demands the viewer to take it for granted that there is an actress playing the part of the doll. This suspicion will only disappear for good with her flashback.

Although this flashback scene fails to explain the doll’s fear of bottles (it seems there’s a bottle in the right hand of the kidnapper, but the shot is too dark to reveal it properly), it heartbreakingly reveals her humanity. The news on the French TV confirms her horrid tragedy – she was kidnapped as a child (her name is Madeleine, like in the famous true event of the girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007) and kept captive. The following process of unlearning what she was told and teaching the basics of human behaviors is treated with seriousness – contrary to the similar process with Bella in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things (2023). Coincidentally, the actress in Doll#195, Lou Gala, resembles Emma Stone, who played Bella.

The directing in Doll#195, signed by Martin Lloyd and Anja Ramaroson, does not reflect that they are in the beginning of their careers. All the framings, shots, camera movements, lighting, sound, music, acting… in other words, the whole mise en scene was certainly result of a thorough planning intended to tell the story as in the classic cinema, which is keeping the camera invisible, luring the audience into the narrative.

There are a few exceptions, though. For instance, in the shot where Walter lay his hands on the lid of the doll’s box, the position of the camera gives the impression that it is standing. In another scene, when the camera films the doll’s list of instructions, it stays on the screen too briefly, making it difficult to be read. In some sequences, the directors abandon deliberately the classic cinema. For example, in the montage with Madeleine trying different pills that alter her state, it is a good solution to show her with a myriad of shirts. In another scene, jump cuts are used while Walter is checking out the kitchen cabinet.

However, for such a well-directed film, the ending is below the expectations it created. Besides neglecting a crucial scene (which would deny the father-daughter relationship), though the vengeance plan is a surprising revelation, it deviates from the kidnapping theme that is definitely more significant.

2023, UK, 40 min

Sam Ebdon

Cinematography by

Music by

Natasha Pikoul, Mahatsangy Ramaroson, Richard Tomes

Eduardo Kaneco

Film critic, the founder of Leitura Filmica