Perhaps the most surprising thing about Ex Machina, a claustrophobic science-fiction movie in which two very different men orbit the female artificial intelligence one of them created, is that the she-A.I. is played by someone other than Scarlett Johansson. Over the past few years, we’ve had a run of movies that have engaged with the idea of post-human consciousness through a female face or voice or form, and no matter the story or its tone — twee in Her, trashy in Lucy, darkdarkdark in Under the Skin — it’s been Johansson who’s been asked to lend her absolute womanhood to the not exactly human part. Indeed, one might be forgiven for assuming that there was an industry-wide flow chart for every sci-fi script, with an arrow pointing to “Call Scarlett’s agent” whenever a transhuman female role comes up.
But now the string is broken, and we can contemplate the post-human feminine in the form of Alicia Vikander, the mostly unknown actress starring in Ex Machina. Though it’s not really her form, at least at first: When we meet Vikander’s Ava, she has a human face and silhouette, but her body is a mix of steel and mesh and sleek clear plastic, through which networks of lights and wires and cords can be discerned.
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