Aeon Flux (2005)
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Aeon Flux is sent to kill Trevor Goodchild, founder of Bregna, and during the failed assassination attempt learns that she is living in a community of clones.
In 2011, a virus kills ninety-nine percent of the world’s population. Prominent scientist Trevor Goodchild devises a cure for the five-million survivors, and together they form a community called Bregna. Goodchild leads this isolated community, but after four-hundred years of Goodchild’s rule, a group of rebels called Monicans begin to challenge the totalitarian regime. Aeon Flux is a Monican assassin sent by her Handler to eliminate Trevor Goodchild, and as her sister has just been killed by the police, Aeon readily accepts this assignment. Upon meeting Goodchild, however, she finds herself unable to complete the mission. He evokes memories of events that never happened, and she senses that he possesses the key to her existence. Both Aeon and Goodchild become fugitives, and Aeon infiltrates the blimp-like structure that floats above the city for answers. There she learns that her sister has been “reassigned” and is now starting life again as an infant. Una’s DNA, like everyone else’s in the community, has been recycled; it is stored in the blimp and is redistributed upon death. Goodchild informs Aoen that the cure for the virus induced sterility in the remaining population, which would have died out in a few generations without his cloning plan. Goodchild and his brother, Oren, have regulated and monitored the program for successive generations, passing their knowledge to their clones with the hope that the sterility could eventually be reversed. Oren realizes that Goodchild is close to achieving his goal, and plots to eliminate both Goodchild and Aeon so that he might continue to rule indefinitely. Aeon and Goodchild must defeat Oren in order to continue the necessary research into curing the sterility, because as Aeon states, living as clones of dead people is only a shadow life.
Aeon recognizes Goodchild as familiar, although she has no precise memory of an earlier life with him; the vague flashes of memory seem to be located in her genes, only to be reawakened upon their future interactions. Perhaps Aeon’s genetic memories are stronger because she is the first clone of Goodchild’s wife, Catherine, whose genes were stored for four-hundred years until a time where she could effectively intervene in Goodchild’s regime. Goodchild responds to Aeon because he has had passed down to him the original Goodchild’s memories through successive generations of Goodchild clones; what he and his brother have done is essentially to live forever by “teaching” memories to younger clones. The process of cloning for the rest of the community prevents this perpetual life: food additives are administered to suitable couples, which induces a chemical pregnancy, and during the pregnancy exam the cloned embryo is inserted into the womb. Communal ignorance of the process eliminates some of its potential dangers, including attempts to locate those who died and were recloned. Oren attempts to halt Goodchild’s advances by destroying his lab, but cannot prevent all spontaneous pregnancies; many women in the community have overcome their sterility and naturally conceived children. Ultimately, “nature finds a way” to achieve what Goodchild attempts to do for generations.
– Natalie Champ