Disposable Darling

sci-fi, drama, 25 minutes

Oscar, a wealthy middle-aged man, is obsessed with a woman who broke his heart many years ago. Unable or unwilling to move on, he finds a solution – buying a robotic copy of the woman, essentially a replicant, virtually identical to a real person but programmed to be anything he wants it to be. Oscar meets with the enigmatic Mr Chernoff, who provides the service of “recreating” a person based on photos, recordings and other information – but it’s not as straightforward as Oscar might have hoped. He is forced to go through the unpleasant and painful process of recalling every little detail about the girl he claims he still loves.

While Chernoff is glad to make another sale, he also urges Oscar not to lie too much about his ‘memories’, insisting on creating a ‘real’ portrait of the girl instead of an imaginary, idealistic version. But Oscar is stubborn in his pursuit of ‘another chance’. He wants everything to be different this time; he wants the girl to love him back, something that never happened before. For a while, Oscar enjoys his new ‘toy’, but as the novelty quickly fades as he comes to understand what Chernoff meant. Obsession has nothing to do with love; it’s about being addicted to emotions, both good and bad. Oscar realizes that he has been harboring a hidden agenda and suddenly the story takes a dark turn.

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