It's crucial for a documentary film to stick to the subject. And when "Synthetic Pleasures" sticks to its subject, it's interesting, if not thoughtful. That's only about half the time, though.
At times, the documentary wanders around from place to place and person to person, seemingly without reason. And just when things are about to get completely out of control, director Iara Lee finally manages to get things back on course.
Under the guise of explaining man's drive to control his environment, Lee interviews a variety of presumed experts about the influence of technology on human experience.
According to Lee and the documentary, man now has the power to transform his surroundings, either through virtual reality or controlled environments such as shopping malls; his body, through genetic engineering and plastic surgery; and his identity, through so-called "smart drugs," mood-altering drugs or virtual identities.
The film's first third tours some of the world's strangest synthetic environments, including indoor beaches like Seagaia, or Ocean Dome, in Miyazaki, Japan. It also compares the themed Las Vegas casinos, such as the pseudo-Egyptian Luxor resort, to virtual reality because both are controlled, simulated environments.
Its second part explores the use of recent technologies to transform and transcend the human body — in particular, efforts to prolong human life or achieve immortality by nanotechnology or cryogenics.
And the muddled, problematic final section attempts to investigate man's relationship with these new technologies, as well as the consequences of their use.
It's in the final 30 or so minutes that Lee really loses a grip on her subject. Rather than seriously delving into the obvious theological question of whether man should be playing God, she details more paranoid conspiracy theories about governmental control of or restrictions on the Internet.
And as noted before, some of Lee's subjects are really out there. For instance, Orlan, a French performance artist, has implants inserted in her face to make her look like the Mona Lisa. Elsewhere, she interviews transsexual cyberpunks and ravers, none of whom have anything much to say, aside from their somewhat freakish appearances.
However, if they weren't in the movie, Lee would have had to throw in more extraneous computer animation footage, which she slips in whenever one of her other interviews gets dull.
This isn't to say that everything in the film is bad. In fact, the first 30 minutes are fascinating, especially the eerie parallel of having so many patrons at the tranquil Seagaia while a typhoon begins to threaten the real city outside.
But overall, "Synthetic Pleasures" could have been improved greatly if Lee had whittled things down to about five or six interviews, which could have been more in-depth.
The film is not rated but would probably receive an R for some nudity, both real and animated, a graphic sexual bit from a cyber-porn Net site and some brief hospital gore.