Starring Emilia Clarke, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Written & Directed by Sophie Barthes

Streaming on Netflix

A couple share their pregnancy via a detachable artificial womb.

I don’t know about you, but when a sci-fi movie pops up on a streamer and it clearly has a decent cast, but hasn’t troubled movie theatres, nor crossed the screens of many reviewers, nor received much in the way of publicity… well let’s just say my expectations don’t exactly go through the roof. So it was for Sophie Barthes’ The Pod Generation starring Emilia Clarke (who I like) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (who I like even more) which appeared without a trace on my Netflix feed. I duly braced for disappointment.

In 22nd century New York (looking incredibly like Belgium where the movie was shot), Rachel (Clarke) is getting broody. On the down side she might lose her promotion if she gets pregnant. On the up side her boss is prepared to pay for her, and husband Alvy (Ejiofor), to have a baby incubated in an artificial womb – basically a large plastic egg which sits on a glowing charger-feeder unit like an old fashioned iPod. What follows is a gentle, amiable satire on the technification of childbirth.

If they really can’t be bothered with pregnancy they can leave the incubator pod at The Womb Centre and just pick the baby up once it’s cooked. Rachel and Alvy – a biologist with quaintly unfashionable notions about nature being kind of cool – have other ideas. Alvy in particular wants to bond with his prospective child, inspiring womb-envy in Rachel, who is simultaneously self-conscious about carrying the unborn child around strapped to her belly. It’s so cumbersome having a growing foetus bulging out in front of you! Why on earth would you do that? It makes much more sense to wear it on your back like a rucksack. Duh! And so the movie continues with little in the way of surprises, but with lots to enjoy.

Verdict: The Pod Generation isn’t going to shake your world, but for anyone who has engaged in neurotic middle class parenting (guilty as charged) it has enough sweetly observed social comedy to fill its ambling but never boring 109 minutes. 7/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com