The Whispering Star

In the distant future, humanity has largely died out, while eighty percent of the universe is populated by machines. The ever-whispering android Yoko is one of them. In a strange spaceship that looks like an old Japanese villa, she flies through the cosmos looking for virtually deserted planets to deliver her cargo of parcels. In her audio diary, she keeps track of her thoughts, such as: Why did humanity lose interest in distant places after teleportation was invented? The only one she can talk to is a malfunctioning on-board computer.
For filmmaker/poet Sono Sion, best known for his frenzied exploitation films and inventive genre mixes, The Whispering Star is a striking excursion into a calmer kind of cinema, with humorous references to the work of Stanley Kubrick and Andrej Tarkovski. But here too, the fixed ingredients of his oeuvre - a keen eye for tight compositions and a sardonic sense of humour - are amply present.