Celie wrings emotion into even the most factual of statements — when she says her daughter was born in 2015, it thrums with the ache of how young she died — while Rose infuses even sexual encounters with a clinical coldness. If these women seem more like types than real people for much of the film’s early portions, that ceases once the script brings them together and the sweet weirdness of their odd-couple chemistry begins to propel the story. We find out that for Rose, the indisputable facts of science are a way to cope with the inevitability of death, and the punishing toll she exacts on her own body is worth it if she can regenerate another. Celie’s compassion is what makes her a better caregiver, but her emotion is also what dangerously overrides her better judgment. The two women fall into an easy pattern of co-parenting, reimagining Sunday morning cartoons and first steps as a series of cognitive and behavioral data points to be logged.
Trading tenderness for the inherent terror of her premise, Moss and co-writer Brendan J. O’Brien don’t dwell on the horrors of what Rose and Celie are attempting to do, or even the ethical considerations. Instead, the film reflects a world in which painful, medically invasive procedures — an amniocentesis test involves a long needle being inserted into the woman’s stomach, right next to the baby’s head — have long been considered routine for women. Under the film’s mad science premise brews a potent tale about motherhood, the feeling of guilt that accompanies it and the risks and heartache that follow. Rose, despite her ability to create life, has never considered how to nurture it in the way that a parent can. And Celie, whose identity has become so inextricable from her motherhood, is left bereft by the prospect of her newly animated child not recognising her.
