Splice (2009), directed by Vincenzo Natali, is an amniotic-fluid-covered romp into the not-so-hypothetical world of designer organisms. Clive (Adrian Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), genetic engineers with dubious morals and of-their-time fashion taste, dream of creating the first human-nonhuman hybrid by splicing together a veritable charcuterie board of DNA. Frustrated with their money-hungry and dully evil bosses, the duo blows off their duties at the company N.E.R.D. (Nucleic Exchange Research and Development) and launches into rogue territory: attempting to bring a hybrid organism to life in a giant synthetic womb. Their reasoning for this comically irresponsible plan contains the usual platitudes about “saving humanity,” but all reasoning is out the window once she is “born.”
She being Dren, the half-human, half-animal creature onto which Elsa instantly projects a twisted parent-child relationship. From the moment baby Dren—who in the early days appears like a cross between a teacup pig, a chicken, and a human child—begins ricocheting and screeching around the lab, everything in Elsa’s eyes screams That’s my baby. Clive meanwhile seems to wonder if he’s been astral-planed into a late-night showing of Eraserhead, but seems powerless or unwilling to put a stop to Elsa’s increasingly unhinged parenting as all scientific protocols are forgotten. A slightly underbaked character played by a slightly overqualified Brody, Clive exists mainly as a weak voice of reason.
Dren grows extraordinarily quickly, and Elsa wastes no time in putting her in dresses and giving her dolls, the usual little-girl starter pack. The film’s recurring emphasis on Dren’s gender enforcement, which in 2009 might have flown under the radar, seems glaringly awkward and obvious today. As Dren approaches something resembling teenagerdom, Elsa and Clive move Dren to the company basement and continue to ignore their actual jobs, resulting in a company disaster that puts their careers on the line. They’ve got bigger problems: the secret begins to trickle out. Elsa and Clive decide to take Dren to Elsa’s old childhood home in the country to hide, stirring up a host of unspecified but intense traumatic memories for Elsa. Also, at this point Dren (now played by Delphine Chanéac) is a young adult creature and is . . . hot?
The third act of Splice is a lively Petri dish of cinematic pizzazz. There’s emotional manipulation, parental projection, a make-over scene, repressed trauma, and a little hybrid-human sexy fun time. Buoyed by Cyrille Aufort’s moody and dramatic score, the film, against all odds, shakily sticks the landing. Some of the underlying themes of the movie—parenthood, gender constructs, questions of control—come together in a finale in which actions and consequences meet (and mate) for the first time.
Splice screens April 21–24 at Anthology Film Archives as part of their series "The Cinema of Gender Transgression: Trans Film."
