Friends for Sale: Jenna Ortega is a Solar-Powered Android in Taika Waititi’s Furturistic Fable ‘Klara and the Sun’
Jenna Ortega stars as a hopeful android companion in Taika Waititi’s new film, Klara and the Sun.
Based on the 2021 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun is set in a dystopian future earth where parents with enough money can purchase android companions, called Artificial Friends or AFs, for their children. Ortega plays the Klara of the title, who is selected from a store window display by teenaged Josie (Mia Tharia) and reluctantly purchased by her mom Chrissie (Amy Adams).
“If I’m going to be buying you a robot, I’m not going to be spending money on an old, outdated one,” Chrissie says, pointing at Klara’s disheveled appearance.
“You said I can choose, and I choose Klara,” replies Josie. “She’s special.”
“And she’s on special,” adds the store manager, played by Natasha Lyonne, who jumps into frame. “20 percent off!”
Josie takes Klara home and finds she has to teach her everything.
“AFs are like a blank canvas,” Ortega’s eager, wide-eyed Klara says in the trailer. “We come out of the lab with the intelligence of a toddler, and then we learn everything from our humans.”
But while Klara is learning all about living and growing closer to Klara, Chrissie is still threatening to take her back, where, according to Lyonne’s character, she’ll be melted down and turned into a next-generation Artificial Friend. She decides to try to help her human friend, who has a mysterious illness, and somehow heal the family that chose her.
Waititi, who won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Jojo Rabbit, wrote the screenplay with Dahvi Waller, basing it on Ishiguro’s novel. Ishiguro’s sci-fi novel Never Let Me Go, published in 1991, was also made into critically-acclaimed novel of the same name, released in 2010 and starring Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, and Carey Mulligan.
Aran Murphy, son of Cillian Murphy, stars alongside Ortega as Josie’s best friend Rick. Steve Buscemi also appears along with Rachel House, Harry Greenwood and Sophia Bryant-Taukiri.
Klara and the Sun will rise only in theaters beginning on October 23rd.
