Tribeca: “Deepfake” Gets to the Heart of the Matter
Going through a breakup tends to bring out the worst in people. The worst haircuts, decisions, and mistakes one could possibly make usually come in the wake of a broken heart. The severity grows with the length of the relationship. In Matt Eames’ Tribeca world-premiering Deepfake, the movie begins in the aftermath of a two-year relationship, but this isn’t your typical story of a brokenhearted person getting their life back together. In fact, Deepfake might leave its character worse off than when she started.
To put it lightly, Jane (Jessica DiGiovanni) is not doing well. Her breakup sees her in the midst of an existential crisis, hiding in her apartment and endlessly scrolling on her ex’s social media. He seems to have moved on immediately with a hot new girl. They’re doing all the things he never did with Jane, which stings all the more. This should be the time Jane leans on her friends, but they don’t know how to talk to her anymore. They’re in such different stages of life that it’s like talking to a stranger. In an act of desperation, Jane hires Zoe (Sophia Lucia Parola) to be her yes-man friend and help her reinvent her life.
Deepfake takes simple concepts to the extreme. The relationship between Jane and Zoe is an absurdist look at the idea of transactional friendships. In the case of these two, Jane is paying Zoe to hang out with her and support her. Conditional in the simplest sense, but not outside the realm of possibility. There is no give-and-take in that type of relationship, not in any real way. By taking the transactional relationship to its extreme and stripping it to its barest meaning, Deepfake is able to plumb the depths of what a functional bond looks like. Zoe is not the only person Jane hires from the instant BFF service, and the mileage varies, but she’s the most expensive. It’s a nod to the fact that money doesn’t solve every problem and that when a relationship has no friction, no honest confrontation, there’s nothing that holds two people together.
Courtesy of Tribeca
After Zoe hangs out with Jane a few times, she thinks the key to Jane’s reinvention actually lies in the hands of London (Jocelyn Weisman), a fellow Gen Z-er who believes social media is the answer to every problem. At first it seems the friction between Jane and her hired Gen Z help is generational, but that’s another example of Deepfake using extremes to get to the heart of the real issue. Social media and the outward expressions of influencers are facades that so many people buy into. When a person is at their lowest, they’re most susceptible to falsehoods. Deepfake demonstrates the slippery slope that appears when a person is clinging to anything and anyone who tells her it’s going to be okay, despite the fact that she’s not making any effort to change the situation.
In a lot of ways, the relationships in Deepfake are similar to the rise of Artificial Intelligence and the way people are using LLMs in place of human friendships. Despite having no personal experience in doing so, documentaries like Deepfaking Sam Altman show how people are drawn into this dynamic. Those in vulnerable situations seek resistanceless dynamics. They do not want to be told they could be in the wrong somehow, but that’s exactly what they need at that point in their lives. Whether it be the Gen Z friends for hire of Deepfake or the Sam Altman chat bot of Deepfaking Sam Altman, human bonds need a bit of friction to be worthwhile. Deepfake is absurd and mimics the downward spiral of an existential crisis, but its humor and darkness create something transcendent and honest.
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