Two strangers, Cameron , find themselves sitting across from each other, and quickly engage in a delightfully flirtatious, if silent, exchange.
There’s just one catch to the whole scene: it’s a memory, an event that unfolded years before the start of Swan Song.
Cameron, it turns out, is replaying the moment as part of a medical procedure that will test his love for both Poppy and their son Cory in ways he can’t even begin to imagine.
Diagnosed with a terminal illness, Cameron has to either come clean and tell his family about his fate or hide it from them and be replaced by a clone without their knowledge.
It’s an unenviable position for Cameron to be put in, one that raises a number of interesting ethical and moral questions that Swan Song, unfortunately, doesn’t confront as deeply as it could.
Not only is it revealed that Poppy is still reeling from the loss of her twin brother, but we also learn early on that she and Cameron are expecting a child who will be born several months after his death.
If Swan Song doesn’t interrogate its Black Mirror-esque sci-fi premise quite as vigorously as some viewers might hope, the film does succeed in telling an emotionally palpable story.
The film was shot in and around Vancouver, Canada, and Takayanagi makes the most of its locations, highlighting the mountains, forests, and lakes that surround the medical facility where Cameron helps complete the creation of his clone.
The actor imbues Jack with a surprisingly inquisitive, eager quality emphasizing the clone’s desire to do his job and keep Cameron’s family together.
Jo Scott, the woman behind the film’s revolutionary medical experiment, and Naomie Harris’ on-screen chemistry with Ali helps ensure that Swan Song’s narrative succeeds on a purely emotional level.
Thankfully, while the film doesn’t truly investigate the real-world complications of its premise, it works exceedingly well as a meditation on the nature of love and the emotional brutality of grief.
Fortunately, Swan Song’s final note, though morally dubious in a few ways, manages to bring its exploration of loss all the way back around to the love at the center of its story.