It is a film that clearly construes pornography not as erotica but pornography as a concept – in this case a conceptual cross-fusion with science-fiction. The stated premise for the film came when Cheang pondered the sexual possibilities inherent in Blade Runner (1982). The film posits the logical next step beyond Blade Runner – that of replicants being designed for use as sex androids. There are a number of Blade Runner references throughout, the funniest of which is the opening which takes off from the last scene of Blade Runner – here the origami unicorn is crushed underfoot and the male and the female replicant start making out in the elevator. The elevator scene is a quite promising opening, with the female android blankly mouthing lines like “I love you, I trust you,” something which the actress’s broken English enunciation makes seem even more remote controlled.

The film overflows with a lot of energetically co-opted MTV and Cyberpunk imagery, albeit rather low-budgeted – hyper-kinetic animation and infobyte displays, an excess of flashing light effects and the camera rarely mounted on a horizontal axis throughout. There are some nifty CGI shots of hands morphing into glowing dildos, even internal shots of animated penises penetrating vaginas. And there are a lot of potential elements to the plot – a plan to digitize sexual experience for transmission via the Internet, rogue viruses, the central character of a sex android that achieves self-awareness through sexual awakening. Unfortunately none of it coalesces into a plot of any sort. What is happening at any one time is never exactly clear. The background exists only as a series of info-dumps, otherwise the film is in a sense no different from any other pornographic film – that is a variety of explicit sexual encounters served up at timed intervals. The film certainly covers the gamut of sexual possibilities – in fact with far greater variety than the average porn film which is usually tailored to certain niche interests – hetero scenes, three-way scenes, gay male, lesbian, transvestite, trans-sexual and solo sex. Occasionally some of the setups are quite imaginatively directed – such as an encounter in a room of rotating metal walls and flashing lights, or a lesbian scene in a giant pink net. On the other hand it seems unlikely that any porn aficionado would want to watch I.K.U. for sexual gratification – it tries to do too much else to ever work as erotica. On the other hand as sf it seems a muddled jumble of pretensions that never move beyond being a good idea.

Bizarre trivia:– The acronym I.K.U. is actually the Japanese onomatopoeia for orgasm. The film’s website (www.i-k-u.com) contains a section where one can apply to become an I.K.U. Coder.