I Origins, film review: Director deals with interesting subjects in a boring fashion

(15) Dir. Mike Cahill; Starring: Michael Pitt, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, 111 mins

(HAND OUT PRESS PHOTOGRAPH / FILM STILL) (HAND OUT PRESS PHOTOGRAPH / FILM STILL)

Some intriguing ideas lurk within writer-director Mike Cahill’s screenplay, but he would have to be a Stanley Kubrick or a Jonathan Glazer to do justice to them.

The disappointment here isn’t so much the concept as the visual execution. Michael Pitt plays a brilliant young bio-chemist researching the make-up and origins of human eyes. He’s a rationalist who makes his decisions on the basis of data, but a series of upheavals and coincidences in his private life – in particular his love affair with the beautiful and mysterious Sofi (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) – shake his scientific beliefs. Cahill is dealing with mind-bending subjects, but is doing so in a disappointingly drab fashion.