Companion

EARLY ON in Drew Hancock’s Companion, two young women named Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Kat (Megan Suri) have a prickly moment on a boozy night. When Iris asks why Kat — a close friend of Iris’ new lover Josh (Jack Quaid) — doesn’t like her, a tipsy Kat says she just doesn’t like the ‘idea’ of her. “You make me feel replaceable,” she continues. The conceit of this confession is two-pronged. Iris is deeply in love with her new boyfriend Josh, but Kat is in an abusive relationship with a controlling Russian man; the obvious implication is that Kat is bitter. But the real implication emerges a scene or two later, when the film reveals that Iris (“Siri” when spelt backwards) is actually a companion robot. Up until then, it speaks volumes that the average male viewer may not be able to tell. Iris loves Josh so much that she is subservient to him — she wants to please him by hanging out with his friends on a weekend getaway, she craves to see him smile, and sex for them is basically Josh grunting and rolling over to sleep. It’s all too familiar. So Kat saying she feels “replaceable” by Iris is the film admitting that — in a world captured by the male gaze — a woman robot is no different from a woman.