Klara and the Sun arrives as Taika Waititi’s latest venture into science fiction, but the result is a glossy, sentimental pastiche that struggles to connect. Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Klara and the Sun aims for a blend of irony and tenderness, yet it rarely lands a meaningful point about artificial intelligence, love or grief. The film leans on quirky flourishes and mannered performances, asking viewers to laugh at broad gags while also embracing a solemn tone that never coheres. Waititi has proved his comic touch in earlier work such as Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok, but this outing recalls the misjudgments of Jojo Rabbit without its sharpness.
Klara and the Sun as near-future fable
Set in a near-future that feels familiar but slightly askew, the story follows a trend in which families purchase Artificial Friends, or AFs, as companions for their children. The world-building is sketchy. A sales representative, played by Natasha Lyonne, mentions that a recent third world war wiped out the internet, a claim that sits at odds with the otherwise well-functioning society on screen. AFs are also revealed to circulate a purple fluid known as PEC-9, described in passing as highly flammable, a curious design flaw that dangles more as a gimmick than a credible detail.
Jenna Ortega plays Klara, a guileless, affectionate AF whose defining trait is both her charm and her obsolescence. She is solar-powered, and in her literal-minded logic she treats the sun as a benevolent force worthy of devotion. Klara is an earlier model next to newer Bluetooth-enabled upgrades, making her durability and processing power comparatively limited. The film frames those shortcomings as part of her appeal, sketching an innocent presence whose optimism often veers into cutesiness.
Klara is purchased for Josie, a 14-year-old prodigy portrayed by Mia Tharia. Josie is preparing to be “lifted” into an elite academic track through a costly medical procedure, yet she lives in isolation and suffers from an unspecified illness. Amy Adams appears as her exacting mother, while Rachel House plays the brusque housekeeper Melania, whose deadpan timing supplies the closest thing the film has to consistent humor. The family resides in a remote Midwestern farming expanse, a dreamlike landscape where the city looms far away on the horizon. Klara fixates on a nearby barn from which she watches the sunrise and determines, with childlike conviction, that the sun lives there. The narrative proceeds through this gentle mysticism toward a twist that feels engineered rather than earned.
Filmmakers have long wrestled with giving machine children authentic inner lives. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s recent Sheep in the Box stumbled over similar terrain, while Kogonada’s After Yang offered a more resonant meditation on AI kinship. By comparison, Klara and the Sun is polished but ponderous, a soft-focus fable that mistakes whimsy for depth and leaves its most intriguing questions unexplored.
Release and festival screenings
Release
Klara and the Sun screened at the London film festival and is scheduled for release on 22 October in Australia and 23 October in the UK and US.
Its arrival in the UK aligns with a broader slate of fall cinema and arts events, including presentations at Frieze London that similarly explore mood and atmosphere. The film also enters a marketplace increasingly crowded with AI-themed stories, from studio blockbusters to recent festival entries such as Artificial that test audiences’ appetite for tech satire and speculative fiction.