Faridany stars
as Emmy, a modern-day computer programmer whose obsession with 19th century
mathemtics genius Ada Lovelace (Swinton) helps her to concoct a program
that enables the two of them to interact. It all has something to
do with lingering energy and the artificial intelligence Emmy’s created
for her computerized dog that serves as somewhat of a sidekick on her time-and-logic-crossing
journey. Timothy Leary communicates with Emma as her mentor only
through a blue computer screen, though the effect here comes off as more
Freejack than Cronenberg.
After a half-hour of Emmy’s drama with her boyfriend and the discovery that she’s pregnant, the film switches into full-on BBC mode, with Swinton narrating the story of Ada’s life, which unfolds in tepid, blandly-staged Masterpiece Theater-o-vision. We see her meeting her husband, Charles Babbage, and her attempts to design a language for his “intuitive machine” by giving it a soul. We see her relationship with cryptographer John Cross, and her promiscuity is treated matter-of-factly. We hear the narration switch from Swinton to Ada as a little girl and back for no real discernable reason other than to telegraph the conclusion. Meanwhile, Emmy realizes how much they have in common (for one thing, Karen Black plays both of their mothers) and tries to come up with a way to save her. To disk, that is.
It’s a clever premise, and most of the cast is willing to pull it off, but it never really makes the transition from “math geek movie” to actually being something a normal human being would want to see. The filming style, with a few brief exceptions that recall the grid patters of Tron, is really too bland for this sort of topic. It’s great that noted computer documentarian Leeson wanted to make a film about Lovelace, and the ideas are sound, but a more frenetic or visually-oriented director would have been a better choice to helm. The Sticky Fingers of Time wasn’t a visual feast either, but at least it had interesting characters and more than by-the-numbers plot twists. Once you figure out the ideas Conceiving Ada throws at you within the first half-hour, it’s no trouble in figuring out the rest.
The conclusion is, well, exactly the conclusion the movie’s been obviously building up to without the least bit of twist. By that point, you’ll either be enough of a computer whiz to be fascinated or you’ll have already rewound the thing and be on your way back to the video store. Best bet: Wait for The Sticky Fingers of Time to show up on video instead.